


Dead Reckoning

by Guede



Series: Dead Men Tell No Tales [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Amorality, BAMF Lydia Martin, BAMF Stiles, Bondage, Chastity Device, Cock & Ball Torture, Cock Warming, Crack, Dark Stiles, Dom/sub Undertones, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/F, Forced Orgasm, Gun Kink, Impact Play, Incest, Japanese Rope Bondage, Jealousy, M/M, Mind Games, Minor Character Death, Multi, Nipple Torture, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Overstimulation, Past Torture, Piercings, Predicament Bondage, Prostate Milking, Sensory Deprivation, Sex Toys, Shaving, Stockholm Syndrome, Tattoos, Temperature Play, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 17:24:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 25,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5425508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Derek realizes that his family gets along a lot better when they’re being coerced into kinky sex by a pair of sociopathic mercenaries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, darkfic, please detour if you aren't expecting some extremely unhealthy relationships.

“I could stay,” Derek says, twisting his wrists in the cuffs.

His left shoulder’s still sore from when Stiles bent him over the couch this morning, lassoing that arm with a looped belt and using it like a leash to drag him back onto the man’s cock. The socket already aches like somebody lined it with sandpaper, and the way his arms are bent behind him now is uncomfortably close to the same, but that bedpost the cuffs are attached to isn’t giving him any slack.

“When you tried so hard to talk me into this in the first place?” Stiles finishes securing Peter’s hands behind him, then drapes himself over Peter’s shoulders. “Cold feet, Hale? Now? Seriously?”

Peter’s kneeling with his back to the headboard, shifting from knee to knee as Stiles’ fingers dangle dangerously near his nipples, their piercings swinging wildly as he tries not to fight his gag. It’s been long enough for the flesh to heal around the rings, but Stiles teases the nipples so much that one or the other of them is always reddened and tender-looking. Today it’s the right one and as Stiles leans further over Peter’s back, he catches it between two of his fingers. Peter’s eyes start to roll back into his head.

Stiles laughs, even though he’s still looking at Derek. He drags his fingers through Peter’s hair as Peter’s head lolls a little, pulling towards him. Then he drops both arms around Peter’s waist, playing instead with the metal cage locked around Peter’s cock. “Come on, I _know_ you want it,” Stiles says, flicking his tongue over his lower teeth. “You do. You do, Derek, don’t front. You want that gun in your hand.”

He cups Peter’s balls with one hand, runs the other up the smooth steel till he can pinch and press at the head of Peter’s cock. His fingers get shiny right away with precome; he’s had the cage on Peter since last night and Peter’s been glazing over on and off. Peter’s definitely glazed now, sightless for all that his eyes are wide open, rutting mindlessly up into Stiles’ hands. When Stiles pulls them away, he and Derek moan almost in the same moment.

“You want that kill, too,” Stiles snorts. “I saw you, you know. You were so pissed off Lydia got to Deucalion first.”

Derek snarls, pulls his whole weight on his cuffs, even though he knows he’ll pay for it later, and not just in more wrenched shoulders. Stiles is right. He hates it when Stiles is right. Hates it because it’s _Stiles_ , because this is the guy who’s got them not just working but _dancing_ for the son of a bitch, which is a hell of a lot more than either the Argents or the Alphas ever managed. Because this is the guy who’s got Peter whining and rubbing back against him, making goddamn noises Derek’s never gotten from him.

Because this is the guy who makes Derek pant for it when he’s right. 

Fucking Deucalion. Months Derek’s been dreaming of gutting that man, tearing out his heart and bringing it home, and Stiles’ goddamn girl goes and gets him with a shrapnel bomb. Hadn’t even been enough to jerk off over—or had been too much, depending on how you look at it. The blood splatter had had a fifteen-foot spread, and they’re only human.

“I know, kiddo, I know,” Stiles says, faux-fatherly, pulling a solemn face. He poses with his hand on Peter’s shoulder for a second, Peter’s head hanging as he tries to stop whimpering, and then grins. Pulls Peter back by the arm, fastens Peter’s wrists to the headboard. “But hey, that’s the whole point of today, making it up to you. So why you are trying to welsh out now, of all times—”

“I’m not freaking out,” Derek mutters. “It’s not like I’m scared.”

He’d say he lost that ability years ago, except that his heart does still stutter once in a while, like somebody’s stuck a spike of ice through it. Like now, looking over and seeing Peter’s head come up and having their eyes meet that one second before Stiles reaches for the blindfold. Peter says he’s not scared all the time and he’s a goddamn liar.

“I just—” Derek starts. Blindly, no idea what the hell he’s going to say, should say, needs to say. No expectations either. When Stiles listens he listens, he hears everything they say and don’t say, and then he goes and fucks them over how they didn’t want but it turns out they really, really _need_ it that way.

Fucker. Stiles looks up, frowns. Flips the blindfold back and forth, back and forth in his fingers, and halfway hypnotizes Derek before Derek realizes the man’s waiting on him.

Shit. He looks at Peter again and Peter’s with it enough to be mad, to be willing Derek to just shut up and look pretty and let the psycho kid psycho them. Fuck him too, Derek thinks, while his mouth’s moving. God, why _Peter_. “Do we have to leave him?”

“Well, we’re not bringing him, clearly,” Stiles says. He looks at him and Derek—both dressed, even if Derek’s got a silicone cock sheath squeezing his cock limp under his jeans—and then at Peter, who’s naked.

“I just—God, fuck you.” Derek pulls at the cuffs again. Doesn’t look at Peter. “He’s going to freak out. You know that.”

“I know I told him, told both of you, actually, repeatedly, every time we went over this, that it’s going to be a couple hours, max.” Stiles slides his hand up and down the back of Peter’s neck as he talks, and Peter twists around, nuzzles the man’s arm through the gag. Weirdly, Stiles ignores him, except to scrunch fingers into the curls at Peter’s hairline, putting a pained wince on Peter’s face. “Left him longer before, so why are you so—”

“That was for—for grocery runs, shit like that,” Derek says, and then hisses and scoots back, even though Stiles has done nothing but just _look_ like he’s going to cross the bed. “It wasn’t to go out after one of them, it’s just, it’s Ennis, he’s the one who fucking—fuck.”

Peter’s pissed enough to growl around the gag. Then he whimpers again, as Stiles drags his head back. He and Stiles stare at each other, and then Stiles lets go. Rolls his eyes as he gets off the bed and comes around to Derek. He unlocks Derek’s cuff chain from the bedpost and kicks Derek’s foot out from under him at the same time, making Derek fall towards the door.

“Guys, we do have a timeline, you know. I’m all for a fun round of Q&A and cock torture as much as the next guy, but we gotta go,” Stiles says.

Derek stumbles, then is nearly up on his feet before he thinks the better of that and just drops. Of course Stiles is ahead of him, yanking up on his arms, and Derek groans as pain flares through both shoulders, but he gets a knee down and his head back. “Ennis had Peter off for two weeks, okay? Told him me and Laura thought he was dead and had taken off, and we were just two floors down with goddamn Deuc—Peter just—goddamn it, Peter, shut the _fuck_ up, you’ve never been the same since, you fucking know that!”

Peter’s snarling stops like somebody cut his throat. Derek knows better than to think that he did that, and he twists around farther. Sees the gun Stiles has out and pointing at the bed and his heart doesn’t just stutter, it downright ices over.

Stiles is always smiling and laughing and snickering, his hands moving around, his foot jiggling. So when he’s still and sober, completely still, face detached—it’s terrifying. Never mind that he’s at least two years younger than Derek, he looks old as death those times.

He holds the gun on Peter for a couple more seconds, then abruptly holsters it. Looks down at Derek, still distant. Then he snorts and the irritation that comes over his face is easy, like he’s throwing on a broken-in leather coat. From anybody else that’d be fondness.

“You should just tell me this shit, you know,” he says. He runs his hand over the top of Derek’s head, then drops it to Derek’s shoulder. Pushes down hard, till Derek has both knees on the floor. Then he goes back over to the bed.

He takes something out of his pocket: an earpiece. Which he fits into Peter’s ear, after fiddling with it for a second. He puts another one in his own ear, tests the sound with a tongue-click that makes Peter look sharply at him, just as Stiles slides the blindfold over Peter’s head. Peter tenses—Derek’s eyes stick to where Peter’s throat works slowly around a swallow—but he’s not struggling, not mewling and gasping like he usually does.

Last thing, Stiles gives Peter a kiss on the cheek. Then, as Peter’s turning towards him, puts his hand back into his pocket and does something that makes Peter spasm and then twist heavily back into the headboard.

Turned on the vibrator, Derek’s guessing. He’s still staring at the shiver of Peter’s belly when he’s hauled back onto his feet, something cold and metallic pressed under his jaw. “Come on already,” Stiles says, annoyed. He jabs Derek with his gun a last time, then shoves him towards the door. “Let’s get this show on the road already.”

* * *

Derek still thinks about killing Stiles. A lot, actually. He knows Stiles gets off on it, and that just makes him think about it more, and then—

—and then it ends with him ass-up, getting his brains fucked out by some kid who took the Argents’ damage and ran with it, all the way to top-line weapons, first-class everything and a successful career taking out the kind of people who seem to have had it in for Derek his whole life.

Yeah, he’s jealous. And bitter, and all of those things. And he might have a gun in his hand, and somebody else’s blood on his face, and he might think about shoving the gun down Stiles’ throat till the guy strangles on it, but he’s less stupid these days. So he _thinks_ about killing Stiles.

Ennis, of all people, managed to get away from the first hit and he’s gone to ground with what’s left of the Alpha smuggling ring, holed up in an old factory on the edge of some random town. Stiles took Derek up onto the roof of an overlooking building and sat on him, his hands still cuffed behind him, and picked off most of the gang with a sniper rifle, and now Derek’s chasing the last one up a rickety staircase.

Concrete chips blow out of the wall next to him and he crashes through a neighboring door, then whips around. Room’s empty and he twists back, sticking his gun around the jamb when there’s a break in gunfire. He sprays a horizontal line of fire at ankle-level and hears a cut-off scream. Sticks out his head, just in time for a bullet to whizz past him and nail the guy in front of him before he gets a bullet to the face.

“Jesus Christ, there’s just no teaching you, is there? Do you think you’re Zoolander or something? So pretty they’ll never hit you?” Stiles says, shaking his head. 

He comes up the hallway, pistol in hand, rifle slung over his shoulder, and goes right up to Derek. Puts his free hand on Derek’s shoulder, ignoring the gun pointed at his stomach, and then puts his gun hand on Derek’s wrist. His pistol’s almost too warm to bear, where it briefly touches Derek’s forearm. He pushes Derek’s arm down, then smiles and ducks in for a peck on the lips as he takes the gun from Derek.

Clicks out the empty clip into his hand, snaps in a fresh one, and then hands it back as he pushes Derek to go ahead of him. “I left him cuffed to some of the plumbing,” he says. “Also, sort of shot out his kneecap, and I maybe nicked an artery so you might want to step it up there, if you want to get him alive.”

“It doesn’t really make a difference, does it?” Derek mutters. He rubs at his neck, then at his side as they go down the stairs. Some of the concrete bits must have caught him because he’s bleeding a little.

Stiles clucks disapprovingly at him. “Details, Derek, details. What’s the point of being vengeful if you’re going to be so sloppy about it? I bet Peter would—”

“Peter likes to think about how lousy other people are having it more than he likes actually being there. I think he’s afraid of catching their misery,” Derek says. He wipes more blood off as they go around a turn in the stairs. Sees Stiles checking him over and shrugs, cleans his fingers off on his jeans. “Anyway, why the hell would I want Ennis to die watching something he enjoys?”

“Yeah?” Stiles says.

Derek grimaces, but Stiles doesn’t probe further. Not that that’s a relief; as flaky as the guy might sound, Stiles has a memory like a photographic fucking _database_ , saving every clue he gets and analyzing the shit out of it, and then spitting out something later that’s going to get chunks taken out of Derek. 

“Why _did_ you want to come?” is what Stiles ends up asking, for now.

They hit the ground floor. Stiles gestures to go right and Derek does, and they go into an old bathroom, with just exposed plumbing where the sink and toilet must have been. Ennis is still alive, but barely, lying in a puddle of blood by the wall. Derek leans over him and he doesn’t look up. He might not even realize other people are in the room with him.

“Because I wanted to know for sure,” Derek says. He points his gun and empties the new clip into Ennis’ face, then smiles at Stiles. “A lot of dead people get away with it, that’s all.”

“Got it,” Stiles says, grinning, as pleased as if Derek had just dropped and licked up his cock.

And then he takes Derek’s gun back, and he cuffs Derek to some of the plumbing so Derek’s standing at the very edge of that pool of blood, working desperately to keep from actually stepping into it as Stiles fucks him from behind. Derek doesn’t get to come. Derek moans and hangs onto the plumbing with his hands, his cock one heavy piece of ache in his jeans, in that damned sheath, and stares at Ennis’ ragged lack of a head, until Stiles grabs his crotch, fingers zeroing in on his scrotum piercings, and shudders against his back.

On the way back, Stiles has Derek put his head on the man’s lap, hands cuffed behind him again, and then holds his phone so Derek can watch Peter writhing and whimpering back in their rental. Every time they stop at a light, he switches over to the vibrator app and moves the phone up to Derek’s ear as he plays with the speed. When Derek snarls, Stiles grabs him under the chin with steel fingers, pressing hot dots of pain into his jaw while the man rubs his lower lip across the screen to change the vibrator speed. Peter’s moans and muffled sobs fill the whole car, till, mad as Derek is, he’s gasping along with Peter, rubbing his head against Stiles’ leg and curling around to press his trapped cock into the gearshift.

As often as Derek thinks about killing Stiles, lately he’s been thinking the man will kill _him_. And he’s not so sure he minds.

* * *

“In case you’ve forgotten, nephew, he likes to stalk and murder druglords in his spare time, just so he can ‘keep in shape,’” Peter drawls. “He might tolerate your idiocy for now, but that’s not a guarantee. It’s just a—”

“Like layaway?” Derek says, stretching out his legs.

They aren’t tied up, for once. Granted, they’re in a plane thirty thousand feet off the ground, so it’s not like they’d be going anywhere anyway. But there’s a cage more than big enough for the two of them tucked into the back of this charter jet—for exotic pets, Stiles had said, ushering them by it with a smirk—and they’re not in it.

Stiles is up front with the pilot, probably arguing with Lydia. They’ve been on vacation for a week; dealing with Ennis had taken up three days of that and it’s been two days since then. Supposedly they’re off for another week, but Derek’s never seen Stiles go for more than a day and a half without lining up something. Till now. For some reason, Stiles and Lydia can’t agree on what the next job’s going to be, and they’re edgy about it, and it’s been filtering down.

Laura’s with Lydia, but she’s been texting Peter as well as Derek, and normally those two don’t talk except to yell at Derek. And Peter’s been doing the goddamn ‘oh, _nephew_ ’ routine since breakfast. When he wasn’t trailing Stiles around, plastering a smug grin over his lame attempts to beg Stiles to just sit down and let Peter suck him off.

“Don’t be clever, Derek,” Peter snaps. He grips the arms of his seat and stares at the closed pilot’s door as if that’ll get it to open. Then he takes a deep, long breath, and deliberately relaxes. Sneers without bothering to actually turn and face Derek. “It’s never been your strong point, and I doubt you’ll be fixing that now.”

Derek looks at him. Then gets up. Ignores the confused sound Peter makes, and walks to the back of the plane, as far as he can get without going out of the passenger section. That’s where the wet bar is, anyway.

He’s halfway through his second drink when Peter comes up behind him. Three-quarters by the time Peter clears his throat, and he’s just mixed a third drink when Peter sighs and drops into the nearest seat, twisted sideways with his leg jammed under the chair arm to look at Derek.

“Why would you tell Stiles about Ennis?” he asks. Calmly. Casually.

“You’re still mad about that?” Derek says, picking up his drink. 

If they’re allowed to get up and move around, they’re allowed to get up and move around, because according to Stiles, he’s not a micro manager, just details-oriented. That said, they’ve never dared to get even a little inebriated. One, because yeah, sure, Derek is a little passive. He’ll admit it. But he doesn’t want to die any time _soon_ , even if he’s been thinking about how that’s probably going to go, and he knows what he’s like when he gets drunk. Two, because…because they haven’t seen Stiles angry yet, and Peter says that they _do not want to, Derek, so you can make him laugh but do not test him, nephew._

“I’m not mad, Derek,” Peter lies.

Derek rolls his eyes and takes a sip of his drink. The whiskey here is fantastic—Stiles might like to withhold to piss them off, but when he gives, it’s always the good stuff—and Derek is beginning to feel the blurring warmth of a buzz but he’s nowhere near drunk. One more drink wouldn’t do it either—although it’d help a lot.

“Must we do this?” Peter leans his head against the seat back and looks up at Derek, all concerned exasperation. He’s got ligature marks on his wrists, overlapping sets of different ages, and his shirt’s unbuttoned low enough for his rings to glint. He’s grown out his hair some, looking a lot closer to the uncle from Derek’s teenager years, because Stiles likes to twirl his fingers in the curls.

Which Derek’s always liked too. Suddenly Derek doesn’t want the drink, and wants it very badly. “Fuck you, Peter,” he mutters, taking another sip. It’s bad and it’s good and he hates both feelings.

“If it’d help,” Peter says dryly, disbelievingly. He looks at Derek another second, then sighs. Leans harder against the seat, glances down at his wrists and then pushes his shirt-cuffs out of the way to rub at them. “I’m not mad, actually. The more he learns, the more he obviously wants to learn. He’s a little bit of a completionist, I think.”

“Well, then why are you mad about it?” Derek says, turning around.

Peter starts to repeat that he isn’t, and then snaps his mouth shut. He drops the act and looks as tired and nervous as he is. And then as irritated. “You had to do it when he’d just _let_ you go with him. Damn it, Derek, if he thinks you’re nothing but a—spineless little shit, who’s so busy panicking about his uncle, flattering as that is—”

“Which he doesn’t, because I’m pretty sure his favorite thing about me’s how much I can’t help going for your goddamn bullshit.” Derek looks at his drink again, then sticks the glass in the bar sink. Then he drops into a squat, using one hand to brace against Peter’s chair arm as he looks up at the other man. “Honestly, Peter? I wouldn’t worry. You’re still his favorite.”

“That’s not the point, Derek,” Peter snaps. He’s still looking over Derek, chin lifting, enjoying the reversed height difference. He’s so easy about certain things.

So difficult about others, and then some things, Derek just has given up on guessing about. Which isn’t the same as not being surprised at it; he starts as Peter reaches out and they both freeze. Then Derek settles back into place, and Peter…does finish what he started, cupping his hand around the side of Derek’s face.

“Fancy is fleeting,” Peter says, mouth twisting in a parody of amusement. His fingertips stroke Derek’s cheek. He keeps his hands nice and soft, used to hit up manicure bars even when Deucalion was having them escorted everywhere, but his touch still rasps a little. That’s how closely-shaved Stiles likes them. “Usefulness is indifferent to how interested you are.”

“I might not be the smart one, but I just think there’s something wrong in there,” Derek says. He tilts his head into Peter’s hand. “Look, really, you think knowing what Ennis did to you is going to make him think you’re a baby?”

Peter smiles for real, viciously. The fact that that’s the strongest image Derek’s always had of him, ever since childhood, that…probably was the first sign that this was always going to happen.

“Get up here,” he says, and Derek gets up.

Climbs into the seat, onto uncle Peter’s lap, like the grown boy he is now. The chair’s a lot bigger than regular airlines, roomy and cushy and leather-covered, and Derek doesn’t miss the extra rings for non-standard strap attachments. In fact he hooks his index fingers through two of them, caging his arms around Peter as he bends down for a kiss. 

Peter doesn’t even try to get out. Does the opposite, sprawls into it, his hands in Derek’s hair and on Derek’s crotch. He rubs his palm down the zipper, and then his fingers follow the crotch seam, his thumb works out from there till it rolls a barbell. Derek groans, hitches up, and Peter sucks on his tongue till he comes back down, still working the piercing. Then eases back, running his other thumb along Derek’s jaw.

“It’s not what Ennis did, it’s what we did afterward. Or didn’t do,” he says. His eyes are warming like the whiskey spreading through Derek’s gut, heated and loose, almost an affection that Derek can believe. He shifts over, putting his back more firmly against the seat, his head up so that Derek can nuzzle into his throat, start pulling his fly open. “We want him to think—to see he can get more out of us than he’s seen so far. That’s all, Derek.”

“You want him to think that.” Derek can’t help sounding a little jealous. Even aside from the whole Stiles is a success thing, he’s never had Peter to himself. Never. When it wasn’t Laura, it was getting the Argents back, and then getting away from the Alphas. And now…

…now Peter’s got his hand working into Derek’s jeans and he’s still talking about Stiles. “If he’s going to see you as more than just a favor to me, he’s got to see you do something besides tell him how I’ve screwed up over the years,” he says sharply.

And he just fucking does that. Does exactly what Derek thinks of him, and then twists it all out of shape, so Derek ends up staring at him. Him and his mouth, his big, ever-lying, ever-scheming mouth, with its bruised lower lip where he bashed it bucking into a coffeetable, trying to get away from the vibrator Stiles was using to work him over.

Whatever Derek says to other people, or, when he’s being really stupid, to himself, he loves Peter. It’s the worst decision he’s ever made. Or it would be, if it’d been any kind of decision at all.

“Derek,” Peter says more softly, closely. He looks up like he knows exactly what Derek is thinking, and Derek would find that believable except for how Peter doesn’t look smug about it. If anything, Peter looks—looks worried.

He pulls at Derek’s hair gently, like he used to do way back when Derek just loved him like the best family member ever, always willing to talk and tell stories, and then he curls his hand over Derek’s nape. Pulls him down, past Peter’s mouth, till his head’s tucked half-into Peter’s shirt. Peter breathes in slowly, then gasps as Derek licks at his nipple. His hands pull off Derek and then drop to either side of the chair, letting Derek do whatever he wants.

Derek doesn’t get to play with the rings nearly as much as he’d like, as Peter seems to like, however much it leaves him shuddering and speechless at Stiles’ feet. So he goes for it now, sucking and licking, catching the ring between his teeth while pressing the nub back with his tongue. He glances up and Peter’s got his head grinding backwards, jaw clenched. Peter’s whining for him, little hissing whimpers that make Derek wish he’d waited till Peter had gotten his fly all the way open.

He has to do that himself as he pushes his knees off the seat, gets his feet on the floor. He gives Peter’s nipple a last suck before he kneels down, both hands in Peter’s open trousers. “Well, you know, I shot off Ennis’ face,” he says, looking up. “I think he liked that. That and the two assholes I also shot.”

Peter looks dazedly back for a few seconds, probably because of what Derek’s hands are doing. Then the left corner of Peter’s mouth twitches. It goes up, then the other one, and then Peter laughs. Shaking, his hips lifting into Derek’s hands, his hands finally coming up to thread into Derek’s hair. He laughs, and laces his fingers across the back of Derek’s head, and then he forces Derek’s mouth onto his cock.

He’s fine.

* * *

“No, Stiles, we swore never again, remember?” Lydia clucks. Then she frowns, but it’s not at whatever she’s seeing on her tablet. She pushes herself a little further up the pillows, then reaches under the tablet, groping till she’s got hold of Laura’s leash, and then she pulls it out from where it’s gotten caught under Laura’s shoulder.

The leash drags at Laura and she starts to rise, then hurriedly drops and resumes eating Lydia out with extra vigor. And then Stiles, who’d been holding Derek off his cock by the chin, decides he’s ready to go again, and shoves Derek back between his legs, pushing down till Derek’s fighting to breathe, in between Stiles’ thighs squeezing his head and the bedsheets rumpling up, and oh, having to eat out Stiles’ hole.

Stiles grunts in irritation, and then his fingers are digging at the knotwork stretching over Derek’s shoulders and back, keeping his wrists pinned to the small of his back. He uses it to pull Derek down about an inch, giving Derek some air—but that’s not why Stiles did it. Stiles did it because he wants to slouch further down the daybed, so that he can throw grapes at Lydia’s tablet. “Well, come on, all right, we’re not going to find anything in North America this month. I didn’t like that week anymore than you do, but I don’t think it’s a good reason to write off an entire island. And that’s where they’re paying right now.”

When he lets go of the ropes, they snap back into place, stinging on top of all the blood that’s rushing in where they were digging before. Derek tries not to bite the man, but it hurts like hell. Whatever the fuck Japanese kink art it is, it hurts, knots and lines of rope scratching and scraping and pressing right where it seems like all the nerve endings are, and of course, after Stiles raked the shit out of Derek’s tattoo with his nails. At this point the ink’s raised so high that Derek thinks somebody could just cut it off by scraping with a razor.

Laura whimpers loudly, just as Lydia lets out a put-upon sigh. “Fine. Fine, but if we get stuck in that disgusting hellhole of an airport in London again, it’s on you,” she says. Her nails click against her tablet, then stop, and a moment later Laura moans in relief. “What about this one? Good price, travel costs included, very high reliability ratings.”

Stiles makes thoughtful noises and slouches even lower, pushing his ass up against Derek’s mouth. He’s starting to breathe quicker. He drops his hand over the side of the bed, where Peter’s kneeling, and does something that gets a long, shaky mewling noise from Peter.

“But Manchester, Lyds,” he says.

Derek’s got a huge sticky spot under him, sticky and cold and gross, but he rubs into it anyway. His cock’s not tied but every time he starts working up good friction, Stiles yanks his hair. And now the sheets are too wet with his precome and they’re just clinging nastily to him, dragging at his erection like weights. He licks harder, fighting past the ache in his jaw, hoping that Stiles will just goddamn make up his mind already.

“Damn,” Lydia mutters, voice rising sharply in the middle of the word. She pants a little, and then again, pillows on her side rustling as Laura’s moans are abruptly muffled. Maybe she’s sitting on Laura’s face. “Damn, damn—well, it might be Manchester, but we need to get out, you’re getting antsy, you always get us into trouble when you’re—you’re—oh, _God_ , that’s good, yes, yes—”

Stiles snickers under his breath, but he’s rocking with purpose into Derek’s mouth now. Then he puts down the tablet and he—he pushes Derek away, till Derek’s rolled up into the back of the daybed. He gets off the bed and hauls up Peter, and starts dragging him towards the bathroom.

“All right, fine, we’ll go to Manchester,” he says without looking back.

Lydia is riding Laura’s face, and she’s got both hands down on Laura’s breasts, pushing them together, twisting hard at the clamps on the nipples. Laura’s only half-turned and she’s trying to get her hips over—her hands are tied behind her, too—and when Derek looks away from his sister’s chest, he just ends up looking at her groin instead, hair clipped short instead of shaven, wet and shiny as her mouth and chin, and a button of purple plastic showing further back, sticking out of her vagina.

Derek is hard, frustrated, and mad that he’s embarrassed. Embarrassed that he’s mad. Something. He wrenches his head aside and pushes his face into the bed, and doesn’t look up till Lydia’s running her hand through Laura’s tumbled hair, shoving his sister over as she climbs off the bed. Lydia shakes out her dressing gown, then belts it and wanders off into the other room.

Peter and Stiles are still in the bathroom. Peter stopped crying out a couple seconds ago, but that doesn’t mean he came, or that Stiles is done. Growling, Derek tips his head till his forehead’s pressed into the mattress. He pushes up his hips, pauses to try and pull the sheets away from his groin with one knee, and then humps painfully across the bed till he can at least get onto a dry area.

“Why do we let them do this,” Laura mutters. When he looks over, she’s still on her back but she’s scissored a pillow between her legs, squeezing her knees rhythmically into it. She looks up, then snorts. “Seriously, Derek, you’re going to get squeamish now?”

“Why is it every time we meet up, you sound more and more like Peter?” Derek says. He rolls against a pillow, then rolls off because it’s making the ropes press harder into his back. But that makes the ropes press too, into his belly, and he never was sensitive in half the goddamn places Stiles has made him be touchy about.

Laura watches him for a while. Doesn’t wince at the hard cock slapping between his thighs and into his stomach, but doesn’t really linger either. She’s his sister but it’s—weird. He’s gotten used to people staring at him, wanting it. “If you keep moving, you’re just going to make it worse.”

“Shut up,” Derek snarls, and then just slumps into the corner.

Shrugging, Laura just rides her pillow. She manages to get herself off, he thinks—he’s looking at the ceiling, trying to listen for sounds from the bathroom—and then she lets out a heavy sigh that turns into a string of swear-words.

“These goddamn clamps,” she says when he looks at her. Laura pushes herself up into a half-sitting position against the other end of the daybed, careful of the leash pulling at her neck. Smirks at him as she punches the pillow with her knees, then tilts it with her shin, getting it over her crotch. “There. You wanna come over, get these off for me, little bro?”

Derek looks at her.

Laura rolls her eyes. She was maybe the most normal of them, way, way back before the fire, before she took up with Peter. Popular girl, lots of friends, volunteered on the weekends. Derek’s still not sure what happened. 

Peter says he knows, but the more time goes on, the more Derek thinks he’s lying, because Laura just—keeps changing. It’s not like Peter, where you can see exactly where he’s bent—been bent, sometimes, but most of the time he’s the one doing the bending—and work back to figure out when. She just keeps doing a little more and then a little more, and then she’s fucking their uncle and screaming at their mother to try an orgasm sometime, it might help. And telling Derek to run, choking under Kali’s knee, and locking Peter out on a balcony on a freezing night because it’s the anniversary of the fire, and blowing two security guards to stall them from calling the cops on Derek and Peter, so she’s got time to grab one of their guns and shoot them both.

“So how are things?” Laura asks.

Derek shrugs. Winces as the ropes across his shoulderblades cut in. “I’m kind of sore. You?”

“You’re a lot funnier these days,” Laura says. She sounds amused but she doesn’t look it. “How’s Peter?”

“Why?” Derek says.

Laura presses her lips together. Shifts against the pillows. Her breasts bob and the light coming in through the window behind the bed gleams off the nipple clamps, and Derek looks before he can stop himself. She snickers as he jerks his head off to the side, then sighs. “You two are still together, right?”

Derek looks back. 

“He’s not being too annoying, is he?” Laura asks. She kneads the pillow with her knees. At first he thinks it’s just fidgeting, and then she gets it flipped so that it’s high enough to sort of cover her breasts. Her mouth twists a little and she bends over to hit the pillow with her chin, making its top flop away from her. “Derek. Look, I’m just worried about you.”

“No shit,” Derek finally says. He drops his head and lets his face sink into another of the pillows, even though that tightens all the knots lying against his tattoo. “Well, you’re talking again, shouldn’t you know?”

“I can still kick you in the crotch from here, dumbass,” Laura says. Then she sighs again. “We’re just talking. God, Derek, you know I haven’t—we haven’t since the fire, and anyway, that was just—I don’t know. That was just fucking.”

Derek pushes his face up so that he can look at her. “And you made me talk to him for you for six months, but I guess that was just talking too.”

“Oh, my God.” Laura starts to roll her eyes, and then closes them instead. She mumbles to herself, then is quiet for a few minutes.

Lydia comes back, but she’s doing something with her phone at the same time. She only gets halfway into the room before she curses and turns around, calling somebody, and Laura slumps just a little, chewing on her lip and staring at the empty doorway.

“You really like her?” Derek says.

Laura looks at him like he’d been looking at her, wondering just how hard he hit his head, and if he still thinks he’s himself or if he thinks they’re aliens from Sirius. Then she tilts her head. She smiles like Peter, from certain angles. Derek thinks it’s how she looks so much less like their mother that way.

“I like her taste in clothes. I like her negotiating style. And I like the way she fucks me with her knife hilt,” Laura says, grinning. “You like waiting on Stiles?”

“I like it better when I’ve got his cock in my mouth,” Derek says, and he’s not lying.

He’s being a little shit again, says Laura’s cocked brows. She shakes her head at him, then grimaces a little, moving her shoulders stiffly. “God, she loves the clamps,” she mutters. “I was asking Peter what he does about his, and you know what he said? He just said have Lydia get another girlfriend, for sucking on my nipples after she takes them off.”

“Well, it works for him,” Derek says. He lifts his head a little more, because he keeps getting pillow in his mouth. “That’s what you talk about?”

“That. And business, you know, what we get to hear about it, and our favorite Ben & Jerry’s limited edition flavors. And you.” She gets sober, her voice abruptly acidic. “We get to see each other a _lot_ more than we used to, Derek. We kind of have to figure out how to get along. And anyway, I think I get now why he was so mad at me. It wasn’t fun, hearing from Kali that you’d gone after him and not me. I mean—I understand why, I don’t blame you, really. But it feels different than what you understand.”

Derek starts to say that he’d _known_ where she was, that was why, and then the rest of what she’s saying registers. And then he still wants to say it, to justify it, but she’s looking at him and she’s not smiling, because she’s not mad. She’s just—she’s regretful.

“I’m sorry,” he finally mutters.

“Goddamn it, Derek,” Laura sighs. She shifts like she might try and come over. Then settles back, rolling her eyes, because the pillow’s slipped and her nipple clamps are pointed right at him again. “And look, I guess I did miss him. When I had time to think about it, wasn’t just mad at him all the time. He’s still my uncle—our uncle. And…well, I guess you really are into him, huh.”

Derek shrugs.

“He’s got some things going for him besides being a really good lay,” Laura adds. She’s needling him on purpose, and she doesn’t look repentant at all when he snarls into the bed. Just irritated. “I really want you to just—to learn to relax, Derek, considering—God, look at this, all right? It’s so fucked up and it’s still the best we’ve gotten since the fire, and I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of trying to pretend I’m not like I am. I’m ready to be okay with it. So if you really want this too, you need to get over the fact that he and I fucked. We both have.”

“Easy for you, you didn’t give a fuck anyway,” Derek says.

Laura’s eyes narrow. Then she drops her head forward, blowing her breath out. It hitches when her nipples touch the pillow but it’s still pure irritation. “You are so goddamn _immature_ sometimes—”

“Hey, hey, you calling him names?” Stiles says.

He doesn’t have Peter with him. Stiles grins like he knows exactly what Derek’s thinking, crossing the room and then hooking his hand into the ropes straining over Derek’s back. He hauls Derek up and across the bed by them, then off the bed. His free hand goes down and cups Derek’s balls, fingers going immediately for the piercings, fondling them till Derek stops hissing from the ropes and starts whimpering from that instead.

“Come on, he’s still got come leaking out of his ass,” Stiles says. He looks a little annoyed when he feels at Derek’s cock, and finds it only half-hard, and then he just shrugs and starts biting at Derek’s jaw, dragging them towards the bathroom. “I want you to clean him out while I’m riding your cock, and then we’ll talk about something nicer than whatever your sister was talking about, okay?”

Derek twists his head around, stumbling and shivering as he is, and just manages to catch Stiles for a kiss. It’s clumsy, he keeps losing Stiles’ mouth. The other man lets him try for a few seconds, then lets go of the ropes and grabs onto the back of his neck instead, kissing him right on his mouth, hard and hot.

Stiles spins them around, walking Derek backward into the bathroom. Over Stiles’ shoulder, Derek sees Laura watching them, face torn. He lets himself hit the side of the door, then arches up against Stiles, moaning, and Laura slowly starts to grin.

She’s still his sister, was, is, and will always be. He loves her, too, and she still tries to look out for him. And he doesn’t like seeing her miserable, even if they’re fighting, and so he stalls Stiles for a minute or so, grinding his cock into Stiles’ hand, until Lydia comes back. When Stiles finally gets him all the way back into the bathroom, Laura’s disappeared under the other woman.


	2. Chapter 2

Manchester’s weird. Not the weather—Derek’s lived in northern California and then they were up in Washington for a few months, hiding with some people Peter was blackmailing, so he’s seen that before. But what they’re doing: Stiles and Lydia aren’t killing anybody. They’re just taking over someone’s fancy-ass estate, cataloging rare books and ancient jars and stuff like that, then running auctions.

“You’d be surprised how often this happens,” Stiles says, shrugging. “Private collections have a lot of illegal shit, so it’s not like you can hire a normal assessor. And when you regularly get paid off the books, you learn a lot about alternative investments.”

“Not to mention that some of these things, you really have to expect a little gunplay in the lobby,” Lydia says. She has a jeweler’s loupe to her eye and is examining a pearl bracelet. “You can’t ship this off so they send somebody to pick it up, and of course nobody ever thinks to just send a nice, polite courier with a lockbox. No, it always has to be a bunch of trigger-happy barbarians in bad suits, who’ll probably drop this in a gutter on the way home.”

“So that’s why we do it. Because anybody accuses us of pre-sale damage, well, we’ll just go and take back what’s left, and sell it to somebody who appreciates it,” Stiles says with a malevolent grin. “It’s all asset management at the end of the day, you know. And it’s a _very_ nice commission rate.”

Peter’s in heaven. He’s showing off for Stiles, dropping references to historical periods and art restoration whenever he looks up. Where he’s learned half the things he seems to know, Derek has no idea; he knows Peter was a good lawyer, but if Peter wasn’t at work he always seemed to be over at their house, messing with one or the other of them, and he sure as hell wasn’t reading books on the Mughal Empire when he was doing that.

Anyway, he’s having fun, and Stiles seems to like it a lot. Both Peter having fun—which makes him even better in bed—and Peter knowing all this stuff, which, judging from how even Lydia occasionally looks impressed, is actual knowledge and not just faking it. Which in turn makes Stiles a little easier on them, which makes Peter less edgy about where they stand with the guy.

Which leaves Derek kicking his heels a lot, watching them bicker good-naturedly about list prices and item descriptions. He can help with a little bit, mostly with taking the photographs of sale items, and once in a while there’s enough of a fuss that he gets a gun. He _does_ sit and listen to some of it, and there are parts that are interesting, like how Stiles researches whether a certain party’s good for the money or not. But most of it goes over his head and if Stiles isn’t going to _make_ him learn it, he doesn’t want to.

He asks to go into town once, with Laura. Derek never gets around to asking why Laura spends the whole time rubbing her thighs together, but as for him, Stiles fucks him twice beforehand, plugging up the come inside of him each time. Then slides a cock sheath with a built-in vibrator on him just before they go, and keeps flicking the damn vibrator on right when Derek has to order his entrée, or ask a bartender for a beer, or stuff like that. By the time Derek and Laura get back, they’re both so far gone that Derek doesn’t even give a shit that Laura’s got her hand down her skirt while they’re still in the car, trying to get herself off. He just drives as fast as he can, then stumbles around till he finds Peter. Sucks him till he screams, and Stiles comes and takes off the fucking sheath.

The next time, Derek asks if he can go by himself.

Well, actually, he just asks to go, and Peter’s also in the room and has been complaining about a headache from looking at old books so much. Peter hasn’t gone out at all, except for a couple blowjobs in the garden gazebo and one fuck where Stiles tied him to a tree trunk by the kitchen, so Derek’s kind of thinking. Okay, hoping. They all know nobody’s running away.

But Peter just keeps arguing with Lydia about whether this is a real second edition or not, and Stiles is coming around the table, telling Derek to get up already, if he really wants to go. Derek thinks about taking it back, and then says fuck it and swings his feet off the table. He’s…more than irritated all of a sudden. Not quite mad yet, just irritated. Just that prickling, persistent irritation that keeps making him fidget, has him snarling a little at Stiles.

That earns him a bruised ass. Stiles ties him belly-down to an ottoman and whips him with a belt, talking dirty the whole time about how Derek would do the same to Peter, and Derek comes so hard that he passes out for a couple seconds.

He thinks Stiles wouldn’t drive him so crazy if the guy wasn’t so goddamn good at figuring him out. Even Peter isn’t this good.

When he wakes up, Stiles is squatting in front of him, looking thoughtful. He’s still tied to the ottoman but he can feel some kind of thick, heavy salve on his ass, soothing and slightly numbing. And Stiles is rubbing circles into the back of his neck with both hands, working out the kinks, smoothing the knotted muscles. Derek almost closes his eyes again, it feels so good.

“You still think you can make it to town?” Stiles says, amused.

Not really, Derek thinks. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Just…give me a couple minutes. And get me off this goddamn stool.”

“You’re such an asshole, sometimes I just cannot believe nobody’s shot you in the face,” Stiles says, and strokes his hair like he’s a pet dog. Still, for some reason Derek sighs and moves into it. Stiles gives him another stroke, then goes back to massaging his neck. “He’s not going to notice, you know. You really want to wake him up, it’d be a lot quicker if I just put you on a plane to Edinburgh and had you deal with that jackass who keeps asking for the Saxon goblet.”

Derek jerks his head up and almost knocks off Stiles’ hands. He stares at the man for a second, but Stiles just—he’s just saying it, says his face. Just making an observation, no judgment. He can be so strangely detached sometimes, like they’re all just pieces to him, even Lydia.

“What do you care?” Derek says under his breath, and putting his head back down, too. His mouth pushes into the cushion, which is old enough the leather’s cracked in a few places. One of them cuts at his jaw but he ignores it.

Stiles sighs. Moves his chin for him, then holds it while Derek works through the impulse to just push it back. Then he gets up and goes around, and unties Derek. He steps back as Derek pushes off the stool, rubbing at where the ropes bit into his arms, wincing as the skin of his ass strains over swollen, tender flesh.

“Dinner’s at eight today, get back before then or I’ll put a vibe in you and leave it on all night,” Stiles says.

Derek nods. He reaches for his jeans, pushing up on his knees so he can pull those back up his legs. His head bumps into Stiles and Stiles doesn’t move away. Instead he puts his hand on the back of Derek’s neck, but it’s just lying there, not grabbing or pinching. It’s like he’s steadying Derek.

“Why him?” Stiles asks.

The jeans feel like red-hot sandpaper, and they’re just brushing up against the bottoms of Derek’s buttocks. There’s no way that Derek can deal with that, but he suddenly, and very badly, wants to get out of there.

He pushes his jeans back down, then pulls them completely off. Then he gets up. He has to do that in stages, adjusting to how the bruises on his ass go through a whole spectrum of blistering pain, and then he moves over to the wall, where their suitcases are. He digs around till he finds one of Peter’s boxers. The waistband’s a little loose but otherwise they’re pretty close in size.

“Did he just pay a lot of attention to you? Was the fun uncle?” Stiles says.

“He’s my only uncle,” Derek mutters, picking up his pants again. This time, with silk easing the way, he manages to get his jeans all the way up. Then he zips up, and it’s so _tight_ , pressing down on his ass, he thinks he’s going to—he grabs at the wall, then leans onto that hand and breathes slowly. It gets a little better, and then he decides better tight than loose and rubbing off more skin. “No, not really. He ignored me if I wasn’t being ‘interesting,’ or whatever he was looking for, pretty much like he did with the rest of the world. I just—I just really wanted him.”

Derek doesn’t really want to answer Stiles’ question, but he also doesn’t want to get delayed anymore, dealing with whatever Stiles pulls out to make him talk. Especially if that’s Peter. But…once he does start talking, it gets easier to deal with. Just like his ass, Derek thinks, and snorts under his breath.

That gets Stiles’ attention so he has to give the man something. “I think,” he starts. He pulls on his shirt, then hisses slowly as his jeans push up and down his ass. “I think—because he was the best. He was a lot younger than Mom, she was always the leader in the family, but he did whatever he wanted and he could always talk her into it, was always too good for her to stay mad at him. Well, up till Laura, anyway.”

Then Derek stops. He’s still got Stiles looking at him but that’s all he has, and he doesn’t even know where that came from. He’s thought about why Peter a lot, actually, and has never gotten anything but a lot of directionless rage, and a couple really bad fuck-ups. But what he’s just said—it sounds real to him. Feels real. It’s as good as any other reason he can think of, at least.

“C’mere,” Stiles suddenly says. He smiles, that odd affection in his eyes again, no mercy and yet it’s real, too.

Derek goes over. Stiles puts his arms on Derek’s shoulders, runs one hand up through the hair at the back of Derek’s neck. Then he pulls it down and rubs it down Derek’s spine. Cuts the side of it into the top of the crease between Derek’s buttocks, making Derek rise a little on the balls of his feet, flinching, and then curves it around to cup a buttock, pulling them flush as Derek squirms.

His other hand snaps out and catches Derek’s wrist, just as Derek reaches for the gun tucked into the back of Stiles’ waistband. For such a slight-looking man, Stiles has a grip like an anvil. And he keeps squeezing, long past when Derek’s given up and is whining between his teeth, tears stinging his eyes. He twists Derek’s arm back behind Derek, squeezes Derek’s ass again. Runs his free hand back up and splays it possessively over Derek’s tattoo. Derek dips his head, begging for it, and Stiles kisses him slowly, teasing Derek’s lower lip between his teeth.

“When you’re back, we should go over the next auction,” Stiles says when he pulls back. He licks a little at Derek’s jaw, small flicks that seem to prick heat wherever they land. “We’re going to have the actual bids in person, have a little party. Chances you get to shoot somebody are way, way up.”

“Are you—are you talking me into coming back?” Derek says after a second. “Seriously?”

Stiles rolls his eyes. Kisses Derek again, twisting his other arm up behind him, and then he lets go and steps back. “Unlike some people, I don’t _have_ to talk you into jack shit,” he says. Then he flashes a grin over his shoulder, as he walks away. “But it’s fun when I do, isn’t it?”

He leaves, and Derek stares at that empty doorway for a few minutes, at least. And doesn’t even think of Peter till he’s in the car and pulling down the driveway.

* * *

Derek goes less than a mile away, to the nearest pub. It’s lame, all smoke-stained timbers and beer that goes flat within ten minutes, and the booths have hard wooden benches so he ends up slouching on his feet in the corner, but he only managed to get that far on his whipped ass because he jerked off behind the car after he parked it. It’s not the house, anyway, and the couple locals inside look sourly at him and then turn around and go back to whatever they were doing, which suits him fine.

He’s ordering a second beer, not because he wants to drink it but because the bartender’s eyeing him like he’s going to get thrown out otherwise, when somebody makes a tentative noise at his elbow. Derek looks over and a pretty brunette woman smiles hopefully at him.

“Oh, hi, I’m sorry, I just…heard your accent and you’re American, too?” she says, blushing. Her hand’s twisting in her purse strap. “I’m really sorry, I swear I’m not one of those desperate tourists who just goes trying to talk to their own people. I just…”

“Wanted to talk to somebody who’s not local?” Derek says.

The bartender slams down the pint. Derek looks at it, then pulls out some bills. He peels off enough to cover the tab and the bartender shrugs and dumps the pint out, and moves on.

“Well,” says the woman, her smile going tense. She flicks her eyes at the retreating bartender, then at the two grim men staring at them from the end of the bar. “So, are you in town for the collection?”

“Collection?” Derek says.

“I guess not.” The woman pauses, then laughs a little at herself. “I’m Jennifer. The collection’s down the road—one of the big estates here is owned by a huge collector of historical documents and it’s open it up for inspection. That doesn’t happen more than a couple times a year, and they have a lot of the Bronté sisters’ papers—I’m a literature professor, she’s one of my research focuses.”

They drift away from the bar. Jennifer rattles on about things that Derek’s not into, nervously pausing whenever he looks away. He mutters a few times and she seems to take that as encouragement. Even invites him to come see the center of town, where the people ‘at least look at you when they talk to you.’

She is very pretty. A little like Kate, if you swapped out the hair colors: slim but curvy up top, a way of feeling conspiratorial when she flirts. It doesn’t bother Derek as much as he’d expect. But then, the Argents seem so long ago, even if it’s only been a couple months. Those bastards had fucked with his life for years and years and he’d thought even when they finally died, he’d never get away from them, and now—now he kind of thinks of them as just some bad shit that happened. He’s broken for Stiles so many more times in those two months.

Derek finally excuses himself, making up something about a work call. Jennifer looks beyond disappointed, but she rallies to invite him to join her if they pass each other in town. And Derek doesn’t say yes, but he doesn’t say no, either.

* * *

His ass feels like he’s got two pads of hot coals strapped to him by the time he gets back to the house. It’s actually a relief when it turns out Stiles and Lydia want to have an indoor picnic, and toss a quilted blanket down over some heirloom fur rugs. Laura gets to sit; Derek and Peter have to lie on their stomachs, although Stiles at least cuffs their hands in front of them instead of behind their backs.

“So, did you have fun?” Stiles says, holding out a piece of pita with hummus smeared on it.

Derek takes it with his mouth and eats it first. Peter’s already full and is curious about the bruises on his ass, nuzzling it every time Derek is distracted, then pulling back to let Stiles fondle his nipples when Derek glares at him.

“Some girl hit on me,” Derek says. “She’s American, and likes the Brontés.”

Lydia sniffs. “How mainstream.”

“Was she hot?” Laura murmurs. She’s wearing a corset so tight that whenever she tries to speak louder than that, she starts to gasp.

“I don’t think she’s your type,” Derek says. He takes another bit of pita from Stiles, then freezes as Stiles pushes his thumb down into Derek’s lower lip, hooks two fingers under Derek’s chin, good as any pincer.

“She _your_ type?” Stiles says. He doesn’t sound jealous, just curious. He moves his thumb but keeps his fingers where they are, digging into the soft spot just behind the jawbone.

Derek chews on the pita, then swallows. Peter puts his chin down hard on Derek’s hip, just on the edge of a bruise, and when Derek tries to twist him off, Peter just moves further onto Derek’s ass. “Except for the part where she ties me up and won’t let me get off,” he says. 

He pauses, then leans forward and sucks a little at Stiles’ fingertips, where some hummus has gotten under the man’s nails. Stiles grins and pushes those fingers deeper into Derek’s mouth, curling the ones he’s got under Derek’s chin so that he’s scratching with his nails, but lightly, almost pleasant. “What’s her name?”

“Jennifer,” Derek says, pulling off Stiles’ fingers. He also pulls his ass out from under Peter’s head, and then crawls on his arms till he’s almost straddling Stiles’ thigh with them, looking up at the man. “Also, I’m pretty sure she uses the same gun oil you do. Bar smelled like an ash-tray, but I still got a whiff of that.”

Stiles blinks hard, then grins. He rumples his hand over Derek’s hair, munching on a skewer of grilled eggplant, and then tosses the skewer away and rolls Derek under him. Pulls the plug out of Derek’s ass and fucks in his cock, scraping Derek’s bruises with his nails when Derek hisses and groans into the blanket, leaving white-hot streaks of pain that then fade into a sizzling, quietly intolerable ache.

He and Lydia pull out their tablets and they start researching while they eat. His cock isn’t that hard when it goes in, but it slowly swells and swells in Derek, till he feels like he’s sitting on a wedge and he’s lying flat out, tipped onto his chest because Stiles has his thighs hiked over the other man’s legs, getting as deep as possible. Sometimes Stiles rests the edge of his tablet on Derek’s ass and it _hurts_ , hurts and burns and makes Derek gnaw into the blankets.

“Oh. She is hot.” Lydia hums thoughtfully, and then there’s a little disagreeing sound from Laura, followed by a small mewl. “Don’t be ridiculous, Laura, I don’t _collect_ sociopaths, unlike _some_ people.”

“A pair isn’t a collection, Lyds,” Stiles says in a very bored tone. He starts stroking the side of Derek’s ass, light and teasing, and it’s worse than the push of his balls up into the blistered insides of Derek’s buttocks, the pressure of his tablet right in the center of a bruise stripe. It’s worse because it goes so fast, doesn’t let Derek sink into the pain, get used to it. “A trio, maybe. So Miss Blake kind of seems like a problem. Sociopath, no biggie, I don’t throw stones at glass houses unless I’m out of C4. But the whole fanatic cult thing.”

“Pity we can’t just turn her onto Petersen. It’s one thing to have a sacrilege kink, quite another to destroy priceless relics to satisfy it,” Lydia says primly. “Well. I suppose we’ll just have to invite her over.”

Snickering, Stiles tosses his tablet aside. He’s looking down at Derek, his gaze is like a goddamn laser tracking over Derek’s skin. His hips hitch up and Derek whines, half out of it by now, gripping the blanket with teeth and hands and just trying not to move, to fuck himself on Stiles’ cock like he so badly wants to. It’s hard, harder when Stiles leans over him, cock shifting painfully good over Derek’s prostate, and just—starts—licking him all over. The spirals of his tattoo, licking soft and careful, while hands grip and knead his ass, dragging all the blood back up to the bruises.

“That was really good,” Stiles breathes against his neck. “So good, Derek, really good, you did good.”

And Derek comes, just from that. Just the words.

* * *

When Derek wakes up, he thinks it’s Stiles at first and whimpers, jerking his hands where they’re bound to the headboard. Because who else is going to sit on his cock when he’s dead asleep?

Well, Peter. Peter’s astride him, balancing leather-wrapped wrists on Derek’s chest, sweaty curls tangled into his eyes as he adjusts himself. His cock slaps against Derek’s belly and it fucking stings, because Stiles locked it into one of those metal tube cages before putting them away for the night and the damn thing is hard and heavy. “Derek,” he hisses. “I know exactly what you’re doing.”

“I was sleeping, you asshole,” Derek hisses back. His cock isn’t caged now but it was earlier, squeezed into metal rings while Stiles tested out different vibrators on his whipped ass, and it’s sensitive as hell, bands of raw heat all along his length like that cock cage permanently ribbed him.

And speaking of his ass, it hurts too, especially with all of Peter’s weight pushing onto it. Derek snarls, getting his feet flat against the bed, and then twists them over so they’re at least on their sides.

Grunting, Peter scrabbles at Derek’s chest, then loops his arms over Derek’s head, grabbing at Derek’s hair. He slides halfway off, but then shoves himself back down, balls to balls, before Derek can move.

They both groan. Peter’s eyes roll back a little, and his fingers go slack in Derek’s hair. Then tighten again as Peter wraps his leg over Derek’s waist, works his other knee under Derek till he’s got both ankles behind Derek. Peter got it pretty light for the day, but he’s got a frenzied light in his eyes, like Stiles shoved buzzing anal beads up his ass and then forgot about them, or something equally tortuous.

“I know what you’re doing,” he says again, grinning viciously. “You little bastard. I know everything’s a nail to you, but do you have to be such a perfect hammer, Derek?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Derek says. He pulls at his wrists again—Stiles would leash him and not Peter—and then sighs. Rocks sharply up into Peter, wincing at how the man clenches around his cock, at the way pain ripples over pleasure, and then smacks his forehead into Peter.

It’s more of a tap. Doesn’t even bruise the man, much as Derek wants to just smash it right now. But Peter snarls like he’s got bone bits dripping out of his nose. He glares at Derek, angry and wild and something else, something Derek sees just as Peter grabs the sides of his face, wrenches up his head. Kisses him like that’s how you drown somebody, just fill them up with tongue and heat and so much anger.

Derek can’t help but get into it. When Peter kisses him like that, he feels like he just might be the only thing on Peter’s mind.

They rock into each other. It hurts Derek, and Peter’s shuddering too, nails digging into Derek’s scalp, his moans breaking every so often when Derek doesn’t do anything so it’s got to be his cock cage, but they can’t stop.

And then Peter does. He pulls Derek back by the hair to stare down at him. Peter’s a little calmer, a little less pissed off, but that just means he’s onto payback instead of just making somebody else hurt.

“Just because I leave you alone for one day, does not mean that I’m ignoring you,” Peter says in a precise, glacial tone. He lets go of Derek’s hair and moves his arms so that his wrist bindings are digging into the back of Derek’s head. “I don’t leave what’s mine, Derek. Unlike some.”

The flinch Derek makes is habit more than anything else, Peter throws that in his and Laura’s faces so often. “I didn’t even touch her, you know,” Derek says.

Peter smiles. In the dark his teeth look like shards of pearl. “You smelled her. And you looked at her.”

“And Stiles said I did good,” Derek says, pushing his head forward. His teeth almost clip Peter’s chin. “You wanted me to fucking make him like me, didn’t you?”

“You—” Then Peter drops his head against the bed, his eyes lifting to stare irritably at something over Derek’s head. He purses his lips a few tips, swallows. Tilts his head to look at Derek again. “Do you want me to kill somebody again for you? Is that it? Get my hands bloody and then wipe it all over you? Because that’s so crude, Derek. Not my style at all. But if it will get it through your thick head…because I’m getting tired of it. It was amusing, and then it was flattering, how you just can’t help looking to me, but now it’s just repeating yourself.”

“Why are you such an _asshole_.” Derek pulls back, and Peter clamps around his cock, and they both hiss.

God, it hurts. It hurts and it’s so, so good, and Derek moves again, fucking into Peter, and Peter arches for him, eyes closing, enjoying it, _wanting_ it. And then they both can’t. They’re gasping and slumping, Peter’s head back, Derek’s head falling forward, so that he’s panting into Peter’s throat, feeling that twitch and flex as Peter trembles around him.

“I asked Stiles not to kill you,” Peter finally says. He sounds very tired, and strangely bitter. “Oh, I know, it was just because he felt like keeping his promises that time, but I _asked_ him, Derek. I asked him for you. I didn’t ask him to go get Laura, I didn’t ask him to kill the Alphas, I didn’t ask him for myself. I asked him because you came after me, and I wasn’t letting you go that easily. I don’t—sometimes, nephew, you look to me so hard I don’t even think you see me.”

“Because I’ve been looking at you so long I’m probably goddamn blind,” Derek mutters. He nudges his head against Peter’s neck, then shifts till he can put his mouth to it. Just rest it there, just feel it while he’s talking. “It’s not—it’s not you ignoring me. Not really. It’s—you and Laura, I’m pretty sure you’d figure it out if you ever did really get left behind. Sure, you’d hate the rest of us, probably hunt us down if we aren’t already dead, but you’d deal. I don’t know if I would. Could. I don’t know if I want to bother.”

Peter’s throat stills. He’s not breathing, although his arms are moving, his legs are moving, his ass is moving, all of those shifting around Derek, tightening up. And then he sighs, very long and very low. His cheek rubs against Derek’s forehead, then pushes till Derek looks up.

“I’m not leaving you,” Peter says. He kisses Derek, very lightly, and then he laughs. Pushes himself down on Derek’s cock. “Believe me, if that happens, you _will_ be dead first.”

“Why don’t I hate you more,” Derek says. But it’s half-hearted, he’s a lot more interested in rolling his hips up, burning ass and cock be damned. He’s too hard at this point, too deep into it, no way out but forward.

Peter grins at him, then reaches up and grabs the headboard, twisting his fingers around the chain that’s holding Derek there. He bows his body towards Derek, nipple rings glittering in the little light there is, and then makes an impatient, snappish noise when Derek just stares at them.

Derek shakes his head. Ignores Peter’s second demanding noise, pressing his cock up into the man, and then he lets his hips slide back, lets his cock drag out a few inches. Bends his head and sucks a ring in against his teeth, and slams back into Peter.

“You idiot,” Peter gasps, twisting, knees squeezing Derek like a vise. He pulls up towards the headboard, then pushes down just as Derek drives into him again. “I let you _fuck_ me, Derek—”

“For the third time ever,” Derek mumbles, tugging at the nipple ring. When Peter winces and twists away, Derek traps the ring between tongue and teeth. Makes the man turn back, makes him hold for it. For the teasing, for the fucking, for whatever.

He doesn’t last long. He’s come too much already, and this last orgasm’s like a metal rake going over his insides, pulling together all that heat that’s smoothing the way, softening pain, and then ripping it out so all that’s left is a giant twisting pain in his gut, in his emptied balls, up through his cock. He groans, mouth still around Peter’s nipple, and Peter whimpers at him, shuddering badly. Peter’s cock cage rolls heavily between their bellies, then digs into Derek’s belly button.

For some reason that’s annoying enough to get through the haze. Derek grunts, then shifts to make it roll away. He sucks at the nipple in his mouth, not thinking, just going back to what he was doing before he got fucked out, and Peter lets out an achy, desperate sound. “Derek,” he whimpers. “Derek. Stop. Stop, I can’t—stop, the cage, stop, I can’t—you need to stop.”

Derek lets the nipple fall out of his mouth but doesn’t move anymore, even though Peter’s still hitching on his cock. That hurts but it’s a really hazy, sore kind of hurt, at this point, and Derek thinks he can probably sleep through it. “Well, get off my cock.”

“Get off my leg,” Peter says after a second. “You’re on my leg, I can’t. You need to move.”

Derek doesn’t.

“Damn it, Derek,” Peter says, but he’s sighing more than he’s angry. “You little selfish shit.”

“I’m sleeping,” Derek mumbles. “Do it yourself, or just let Stiles pull me out in the morning.”

* * *

If Stiles just…vanished or something, Derek thinks he’d probably keep on shaving his groin. It seemed like a weird but pretty painless kink the first time Stiles did it, at least compared to all the other stuff he was doing to them at the time, but since then Derek’s…gotten used to it. Or something.

It’s just the skin gets so itchy with the stubble growing in. It really bothers Derek, a lot more than how sensitive shaved skin is—he didn’t really bother before, but now if he hasn’t broken in the pants he’s wearing, and he’s got a choice, he puts on underwear—and if Stiles doesn’t get to it, Derek ends up bugging him for touch-ups. Embarrassing as hell, which Stiles likes, but Derek can’t stand his own hair scratching him.

“I think I liked your ass in the other one better,” Stiles says to Peter. He swishes the razor off in a bowl of water, then leans back over Derek. Swirls foam on with a proper shaving brush, bristles so soft that it feels like twitching silk, then pulls the skin taut with forefinger and thumb before gliding the razor over it.

The bathrooms in this place are enormous. There’s enough room to chain Derek to the floor, hands around the sink stand and ass propped up on a towel-covered pillow so Stiles doesn’t need to flip him, and still have something like an acre for Peter to spread out tissue paper and cardboard boxes and brand-new suits from London.

Peter obligingly pulls off the trousers, folds them, and puts them in the discard pile. He hunts around, then lifts another pair. Checks for pins before pulling them on. He’s moving a little gingerly, what with it actually being morning before Stiles pulled Derek’s cock out of him and then sucked him off. “Vest?”

“Yeah, what the hell, we’re throwing a party so we might as well make it fancy,” Stiles says. He finishes up Derek’s scrotum, then reaches for where he’s got towels steaming on what Derek thinks is actually supposed to be a portable footbath. Plucks up one, letting it flip in the air, and then swiftly wraps it around Derek’s balls.

It’s _burning_. Derek arches so hard the bones in his spine pop, even with Stiles holding his hips down, and screams into the bar of rubber stuffed into his mouth. It’s amazing that the sink stand doesn’t break, with how hard he’s pulling on it.

Peter looks over sharply, and even from the floor Derek can see his pupils dilating. He breathes in a little roughly, even though he’d passed out right after Stiles had blown him earlier, sleeping for a good hour. And then, when he’d woken up again, the first thing he’d done was beg Stiles to not make him come for the rest of the day.

“So, Lydia and I were talking about what to do about Petersen. We’re not _positive_ he’s going to try and rip us off, and he did post his bond, that’s all good in escrow, so he really wants to give us his money, we’re going to take it.” Stiles lets Derek writhe for a few seconds, then tweaks the towel away. He runs his palms up and down Derek’s thighs as Derek slumps down, occasionally dipping back to rub at Derek’s still very, very bruised ass, and then brings one hand around to gently massage Derek’s scrotum as he reaches for the finishing oil.

Derek whines around the gag, dazed and jittery. For a couple minutes he’s just completely taken in by the feel of Stiles’ fingers, soothingly cool in comparison, and then too hard, careful as they are, too much, too many sensations on raw nerve endings. He has no idea what Stiles and Peter are saying.

“…not going to be weird about it, are you?” Then Stiles sighs. Climbs over Derek and pats Derek’s cheek till he focuses. “Hey. So. Peter and Laura and pretending to be a hot swinging couple into cuckolding and St. Andrew’s Crosses so Petersen lets us steal his phone for a few minutes. You aren’t going to flip out, right, because it’s going to be at least a couple weeks before your ass heals enough for another whipping. Also, I kind of need you to help out with Blake.”

“You might want to take out the gag,” Peter says. His brows tick up. “Just a suggestion.”

Stiles rolls his eyes but does that. “I said I wouldn’t make you come again today, but that doesn’t mean I’ll leave you alone, Peter. So, Derek? You good?”

Derek has no idea what that word means anymore, he realizes. He stares at the ceiling, works at the stiffness in his jaw hinge. “How far are they going?”

“They’re flirting. Because trust me, Lydia is like a bear trap to any gropey hands on what she considers her things, and I’m not so big on sharing either,” Stiles says.

They’re both ignoring how still and tense Peter’s gotten in the background. 

“I was just wondering, since unless we missed a room, I don’t think we have one of those cross things,” Derek says. He shifts his ass very carefully, rolling the pillow under him to the small of his back, and then feels something drip down the side of his waist and realizes he actually came from the hot towel. “Why do you need me with Blake?”

Stiles smiles beatifically. “Well, obviously, if she’s hitting on you, she’s not going to go for me.”

Peter does not look happy about that. He actually takes a step forward, which he turns into bending over and pretending to pick out a tie when Stiles looks at him. 

Stiles sees right through it, says his amused snort, but he just gets another towel, a much cooler one, and cleans off Derek’s belly and groin. Then he slicks up his hands with oil and rubs them over the newly-shaved spots. Surprisingly tender about it, careful around the piercings and pausing to shush whenever Derek starts to pant.

“Are we stealing her phone, too?” Derek finally manages.

“Nah, I figured we’d just kill her,” Stiles says. He wipes his hands off on a towel, then scoots in between Derek’s splayed legs and props his elbows up on Derek’s knees. “I just don’t want to do it in front of everybody else. Tends to make people less likely to spend a lot, for some reason. So we need to get her into a side room.”

“Oh,” Derek says. He breathes in deep, and then lets it out. His head lolls over and he looks at Peter, whose mouth tightens and then slowly relaxes. Peter shrugs slightly, and Derek looks up at Stiles, who is enjoying everything a lot. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Personally, I have nothing against the Brontés, but I am annoyed at how popularized their work has gotten recently. I dislike how the genuinely psychologically disturbing elements of their writing have gotten fluffed away in favor of standard tragic romance, which, blah.


	3. Chapter 3

“I’m really sorry,” Laura says, smoothing down her skirt. She’s wearing a strapless dress with a high side slit, red silk trimmed with black leather, and even if she’s his sister, she looks like somebody Derek would stop his car for. “I think Lydia’s mad that I kept bugging her about her old boyfriend.”

“Who?” Derek grunts, because Peter is trying to strangle him with his tie.

Not really, but the way Peter pulls at it, unsmiling, as he does the knot for Derek isn’t too far off. “Jackson Whittemore, Gerard tried to blackmail him into turning on Lydia and Stiles, except at the last moment he warned them and Gerard killed him instead, do not _ever_ mention his name or lacrosse,” Peter says. “Or ask Lydia about Armani, it was apparently his favorite brand.”

Laura shrugs when Derek glances at her. “What we talk about,” she says. “They might be tracking all of our online history, but so far they haven’t objected to any research we’ve done.”

“Well, why would you ask about him, if you already looked him up?” Derek says.

Peter gives his tie a last tug, then…smooths out Derek’s already-smooth shirt, fingers lingering as they get to Derek’s belly. He looks really good too, three-piece suit even snugger than the ones he used to wear to his firm, that always made Derek wonder if his clients factored seeing them into the legal bills. His cufflinks and tie-pin are antiques from some Russian historical era; the cufflinks have little rings hanging from them, with tiny ruby chips, that make Derek think about the piercings hidden under Peter’s vest.

“Because I’m a moron,” Laura mutters. She fusses with her hair. Then reaches over and fusses with Derek’s, slapping his hand when he tries to fight her off. “I don’t know. He actually sounded like a douchebag, really, but she still misses him.”

Derek pushes her again, hard enough to make her click backward on her stilettos. Laura blinks hard, then smiles widely at him. She’s going to get him back by dragging up some dumb thing from when he was a kid—except Peter gets in the way, frowning at something on the back of Laura’s neck.

Laura goes still. Her mouth twists a little and her eyes go hot, and she’s staring at Derek but not _at_ him, and anyway he actually doesn’t just sleep with any family—that’s left, adds a bitter little voice—but he still bites his lip at how she looks. “Oh,” she says, dropping her eyes. She tilts her head so Peter can cradle her nape in both hands, touch gently at her skin. “Yeah. Right before you guys flew in.”

Peter makes a thoughtful noise and draws his thumbs along Laura’s hairline, just under the careless-looking bun that had her and Lydia closeted for an hour with more hair-styling equipment than Derek’s ever seen outside of a salon. He’s so interested that he won’t move over when Derek takes a look.

There are two small black tattoos on either side of Laura’s spine, right under the hairline. She’s had her hair down the whole time, so that’s why Derek hasn’t seen them before. “They’re wolf claws,” she says. “High school mascot, apparently. Left one’s over a microchip.”

“Microchip,” Peter says, his eyes lighting up.

Laura laughs as she turns her head. She and Peter look at each other. He’s smiling at her, hard-edged behind the effortless smolder, and then she smiles back. Sweet as anything, just like the first time Derek caught them and she’d just shrugged and turned back to their uncle.

“So no more running off for me,” Laura says lightly.

The corners of Peter’s mouth twist more tightly upwards. He strokes her neck with one hand, then steps away. “Every time I think Lydia can’t possibly be more wonderful, she surprises me.”

Laura laughs again, leaning into Peter. She hooks her arm through Peter’s proffered one and Derek bites down on his snarl, just as somebody presses up against his back. Derek starts and his hands go down and back, then dig sharply into his thighs as Stiles wraps an arm around front, hooks it along Derek’s inseam, thumb rolling one of Derek’s piercings.

“Don’t ruin the clothes,” Stiles says, nipping another warning behind Derek’s ear. When Derek grudgingly lifts his hands, Stiles gives him a long, flat lick over the bitten spot. Then catches Derek’s wrists, pulls them in front of him, crosses them over his belt-buckle. “Showtime, people.”

“And then some, I’d say.” Lydia steps up to Laura’s other side, looking like a redheaded knife in a slinky silver wrap. 

She’s hungry, tongue-tip flicking between slightly-parted teeth, and Derek twitches a little because she’s looking at him, not his sister; Stiles snickers, loosely rubbing his hands around Derek’s trapped wrists. Then she slides her hand over Laura’s shoulder and up the other woman’s neck, pinching fingers and thumb over the tattoos. She tilts Laura’s head out of the way and gives Peter a slow once-over, too.

“I think I am starting to see the appeal of the whole set,” Lydia adds. She pivots Laura by the neck, just till Laura’s facing Derek. She must be scratching or something, because Laura winces and then sucks in her breath, head tipping, breasts pushing almost out of the top of her dress. “And I’m not usually the mix and match type, you know that.”

“I know,” Stiles says. He’s amused, as always, but there’s a little something to his voice that makes Lydia’s brow arch.

Then she shrugs. She pulls Laura back, pushing her pointedly into Peter, who’s got his head lowered as he obligingly moves his arm to around Laura’s waist. He’s looking at the tattoos on Laura’s nape again, Derek thinks, and then Lydia prowls away and Peter immediately looks up, straight at Derek. He’s not happy.

“Go play,” Stiles says to Peter. He bumps Derek’s head aside with his chin, then cranes around to bite at Derek’s jaw, almost hard enough to leave a mark.

Derek shivers and Peter’s eyes flick to Stiles, then back to him. Then Peter smiles, his cold, tight one. He gathers Laura in and sweeps her towards the doorway. His hand shifts to the small of her back and Derek can’t help watching how it curves along with the top of Laura’s ass.

Stiles nips Derek again and Derek hisses, hitches half-heartedly at his wrists. “What?” he mutters.

“You’re staring like you haven’t seen that before,” Stiles says. He presses his cheek against the side of Derek’s face, moving both Derek’s wrists to one hand. His other hand goes back, then comes around again holding a gun, which he works under Derek’s arm and then tucks snugly into the holster there. “They _do_ look good together, I gotta say. Cute couple.”

“Yeah, a lot of people seem to think that,” Derek says. Then he hisses as Stiles drops the hand from the gun to Derek’s crotch, unerringly searching out a piercing and twisting it through Derek’s trousers. “Shit, what? What did I do?”

“Nothing.” Stiles pulls Derek up a little more firmly against him, so that Derek’s wrists grind hard into his own stomach, then releases him. Walks around and gives him a dismissive pat down the front, flicking away the wrinkles, then grabs him by the elbow. “Nothing, you dumbass. That’s the problem.”

Derek gets his feet under him, so Stiles isn’t just dragging him across the floor. They go out into the hall and towards one of the parlors in the place, which has been dressed up for drinks and bidding for the night. “Well, it’s not like it was my idea to pair them up, was it?”

“You really don’t want to screw your sister, do you?” Stiles says.

“What, am I supposed to?” Derek says. Then winces as Stiles’ fingers jab into the soft part of his elbow. “I don’t fuck all my family, okay? That’s Peter.”

“Really? You think so?” Sometimes Stiles gets like this, weirdly irritated, even though he knows they’ll tell him just about anything at this point. He doesn’t have to make them spit it out, just like he doesn’t have to cuff them to heavy things to make them stay. He just does it anyway. It’s just that, unlike with the sex, he doesn’t seem to get a kick out of this. “Look, just don’t fuck up Blake.”

Derek rolls his eyes. If it hasn’t gotten him shot yet…well, frankly, he can’t remember when he last gave a shit about that. There just are too many things these days that might kill him. “I’m not going to. Don’t fucking hate me for something I haven’t even done yet.”

“Oh, for—” Stiles swings abruptly around. He’s rolling his eyes too, but he’s also grabbing Derek’s hands, stepping in too close to draw a gun, knocking Derek’s chin up and back and then grabbing that, too. Sometimes Derek thinks the man has to concentrate to _not_ move like he’s going to kill you. “You’re so pretty, Derek. Really, disgustingly pretty, and somehow there’s kind of a brain in there, and then you still just…God, you’re lucky I like you.”

“Yeah?” Derek mutters. Mumbles, actually, with how hard Stiles is gripping his jaw. The pain’s starting to lance down into his neck but he knows better than to try and push Stiles off.

Stiles pulls his head down, looks hard at him. It’s not disappointed. It’s not mad, either. It’s strange, it’s almost like the man is _willing_ Derek to do something, and not so he can just slap Derek down for it, either.

“I like you,” Stiles finally says, the same way he says ‘we’re going to England’ or ‘I’m teaching you to actually shoot.’ “So stop fucking around with your uncle, would you? Well, I mean. After you kill Blake.”

“Fine,” Derek says, because it’s not like he has any idea what Stiles means, but yeah, he could kill somebody right about now.

* * *

Jennifer doesn’t start very much when she sees him, although she does stop in the doorway, legs stretched against her evening dress so he can see the outline of a knife strapped to one. Derek shrugs and keeps drinking his beer, which is a lot better than that vinegar at the pub.

“Well, I’d say this is a surprise, but that seems a little silly,” Jennifer says, finally coming over. “So. Not in town for the collection.”

“Nope,” Derek says. He looks her up and down, then reaches behind the bar and pulls out a bottle of rum. Offers it to her.

She gives the bottle a long, considering look, and then smiles and takes it, and mixes herself a rum and Coke. “I really do like the Brontés,” she says, turning back. “But student loans, you know.”

Derek actually has a little bit of an idea. There’d been a short period where he and Laura had been on their own, incredibly enough, and they’d gotten twitchy enough to actually start talking about what they needed to do in order to not turn into the suspicious loners living in the fleabait motel at the edge of town. He’d looked into getting his GED, and then Laura had made him read a whole bunch of college brochures, too, as if he seriously was going to go off and live in a dorm and go to study groups with kids who didn’t jerk off to their uncle banging their sister next door.

Anyway, Peter had tracked them down and that’d been the end of that. To be honest, even aside from it being Peter, Derek had been a little relieved. “I hear the interest costs you an arm and a leg,” Derek says.

“Something like that,” Jennifer agrees, smiling into her drink. She and he stand in relative quiet for a while, as the other guests congregate at the other side of the room where Lydia’s handling the pre-auction inspections.

Peter and Laura are standing very close to Petersen, who keeps trying to get a handful of Laura’s breast while pretending he’s just interested in holding up different Saxon-period gold pins against her dress. Laughing along with it, Peter’s behind Laura, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders, and she’s got one hand back to rub up and down his hip.

“Friends?” Jennifer says. She arches her shoulders a little when she smiles, drawing the scoop of her dress’ neckline tight against her breasts. “Enemies?”

“No idea,” Derek says. He finishes off what’s left of his beer and sets the bottle on the bar. “I just do whatever I’m told, I don’t ask about that kind of thing.”

Jennifer rolls her eyes. She’s a lot less flaky, obviously, but she still has that kind of clingy, searching air, like she’s looking to Derek for something. “I hear you. Listen, my thing’s not going to be up for forever, they’ve got to get through all this medieval trash first. You want to go…find a room, something like that?”

“Okay,” Derek says, and they leave the room.

He takes her to a bathroom two halls down. She’s cuddling up almost before they get out of the room, sliding her hand up under his suitcoat and then dipping it under his waistband. Derek isn’t sure if it’s a grope or a weapons check, and he does nothing and that gets him Jennifer jumping him as they walk into the bathroom, legs going up to wrap around his waist, hands sliding into his hair. She doesn’t kiss like somebody who reads about tragic thwarted love in her spare time.

Derek backs them up against the wall and Jennifer moans, flexing her legs around him. She pulls off and looks down, flushed, eyes sparkling. She looks a little like Stiles when he’s just done what he thinks is a really good job on an assignment.

“Wow, I did _not_ think they’d have something like you around,” she says. “I’m so sorry about this.”

And then she holds up his gun and points it at him and pulls the trigger.

Derek sucks in his breath at the click, his hips bucking up mindlessly—at this point goddamn action movies in the next room over get him hard—and then yanks the knife from her thigh, and stabs it into the side of her neck. At the same time he steps back, hauling her legs off so that when she flails, she goes sideways and back, not sideways and forward.

She falls into the giant marble tub next to them, gurgling and bubbling up blood through her mouth, hands slapping weakly out to either side. He watches for a second, just to make sure that he did hit an artery and that she’s not getting back up, and then steps back. He’s going to get his gun from where she dropped it, but Stiles already has it. Leaning on one shoulder against the doorway, tipping it back and forth between his hands, occasionally snapping the trigger so the empty barrel clicks again, grinning at Derek.

Just a little like him, Jennifer had looked. Same general idea, but where she’d just looked pleased with herself, Stiles looks like he’s pleased with all the arrangements and bets and guesses and straight-up crazy insane stunts he’s just seen go his way. “You got blood on your collar,” he says, then shakes his head when Derek reaches up. “Leave it, now that I’m seeing it, I like that other shirt on you better. We can swap out next time.”

“Whatever you want,” Derek says. He’s still breathing hard, even though it honestly wasn’t all that much effort.

Stiles’ grin widens. He steps into the room, Jennifer death-rattling in the tub, and puts his arm out so the gun presses sideways into Derek’s chest. Then keeps walking, pushing the gun up as he goes, till it’s snuggled by Derek’s neck and they’re chest to chest. “So fucking pretty, Derek. So pretty that even psycho chicks who barely know you feel bad for you.”

“Well, I’m good for that,” Derek says. 

He might have thought Jennifer was easy on the eyes but his cock hadn’t twitched till she’d pulled out his gun, and even that was just reflex, two months’ worth of associating that with getting his mind fucked out. But he’s hard now, hard as hell, sliding his erection up against Stiles’ thigh even as the other man reaches down and fondles him through his trousers. Looser than his usual jeans, irritatingly loose—Stiles’ fingers are grazing and teasing at him, using the advantage, as always, and he closes his eyes and whines and pushes his cock after them, chasing.

Stiles curls his fingers past the gun and just braces Derek’s neck against them, holding Derek up as he roughly works Derek’s cock. He leans in close and he likes biting, likes hearing them whimper when he presses the marks afterward, but this time he just whispers up against Derek’s jaw, hot, wet whispers that make Derek shudder more than the pressure of his fingers at the head of Derek’s cock.

“Yes, yes, you _are_ good,” he coos. He backs them up to the wall, the same one Derek had Jennifer against, almost on the drying blood splash arcing over it. “So good, Derek. So good, you like that, like it, being good for me, you do. You like it so much you’ll cheat on your hot uncle for it, won’t you?”

His fingers dig at Derek’s balls and Derek hisses, grinding his throat into the gun. Metal’s body-warm now, so warm he almost forgets what it is, till it catches on his skin and pricks pain behind his ear. “What?” he groans. “What cheating? You _told_ me to go after her—”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did, and you did it for me,” Stiles murmurs. His fucking voice, it’s not even that sexy. Not like Peter’s, it doesn’t purr and slink like Peter’s, even down low it’s snickering and it rolls its words over each other, like pebbles rattling out of a jar, but what it fucking _says_. What Stiles says, what he always seems to know to say. “You did it for me, Derek, not for him. Isn’t that cheating?”

“No,” Derek moans, riding up against Stiles’ hand. Sweat makes his trousers stick to his thighs; he feels his piercings catching on the cloth and he humps up till Stiles’ fingers push over them, freeing them. And then twisting them, dragging them down till Derek whines, would drop to his knees if Stiles still wasn’t pressing the gun to his throat. “No, no, it’s you, how is that—”

Stiles laughs suddenly. It’s oddly startled, almost birdlike, and then Stiles kisses him so hard that Derek’s feet slip out from under him. When Stiles lets go, Derek does crash down, ass-first, impact jarring all the way up through Derek’s head so that the world swims as he stares up at Stiles.

“You’re so good,” Stiles says a last time. He runs his hand over the side of Derek’s face, then up and back through the hair on the top of Derek’s head, rocking Derek skull-first into the wall. “And I like you so much better this way, Derek, and you know, I think Peter does, too. Now go have fun.”

He walks out. Derek sprawls there under the dripping bloodstain, gasping for breath. One minute passes, then another. Then Derek tries to get up, and can’t, though he does shift over onto his hip. His ass is almost healed from that whipping but right now, it feels like Stiles has lashed him all over again.

Derek tries again, scrabbling blindly over his head. Grabs the edge of the sink and hauls himself up. He’s wild in the mirror, tie rucked to the side, shirt pulled out of his pants, blood down the side of one face and onto his chest and arm. He thinks there might be some in his hair, too.

He reaches up towards that, then snorts and puts his hand down. Lets both hands hang into the sink as he breathes and breathes, and finally pulls himself together. His cock hurts, still hard, but he doesn’t touch it. Doesn’t clean himself up either. Just walks very slowly out into the hall and makes his way back to the others.

The auction’s over when he gets there, and most of the other guests are settling up with Lydia, with Peter acting as secretary. Stiles is talking to somebody so Derek retreats into the hall. Flops onto the nearest couch he sees. Probably ruining the antique whatever, but he doesn’t care.

Laura finds him a few minutes later. “You’re a mess,” she says, studying him. She still looks great. Maybe a few more curls dripping out of her bun, but nothing else. “Move over, my feet are killing me.”

Derek grudgingly shifts for her and she plops down next to him. Borrows his shoulder instead of using the sofa arm so she can pull off her shoes, and then she sighs and leans back into him, still hanging onto that shoulder.

“You okay?” he says.

“Hmm? No, went fine. I’m pretty sure he was going to try something, but he changed his mind,” Laura says. She flicks her free hand towards Petersen, grinning viciously. “Real jackass, shame _we_ didn’t get to try anything.”

Grunting, Derek slouches down the couch so that he can rest his head on the top. Lets his knees spread as his erection wilts way, way too slowly, shifting and sticking against his thigh. He can feel Laura looking at him but he tries to ignore her.

“Hey,” she says suddenly. She’s talking to Peter, who’s just come out and is looking around the hall for them. “Hey, they done yet?”

Peter rolls his eyes, then comes over. He gives Derek a glance over, wrinkling his nose at the blood, and then looks at Laura. When she doesn’t move, he heaves out a put-upon sigh and turns around and wedges himself in on her other side. The couch is honestly more of a loveseat, and it’s tight enough so that Derek has to pull himself up or else get Laura sliding onto his lap. She ends up half-onto it anyway, elbowing him to keep him from getting blood on her dress, as if it’d show.

“Children,” Peter says chidingly, watching them. Then he looks at Derek. He’s a little tense and his voice is cool. “Well, was the lovely Miss Blake any fun?”

“She was pretty much like Stiles thought,” Derek says, distracted. He’s still working on getting Laura’s elbow out of his ribs.

He finally just grabs her arm and pulls at it, only to end up almost curled over Laura as she yanks her arm away and across herself. Derek grabs at the back of the sofa to keep from planting his face in her lap, then hikes himself up. Gets a look at Peter’s face and Peter is mad at him—at him and Laura. And Blake, okay, Derek gets. He fucked Kate Argent as much to piss off Peter as to make himself feel better, and he fucked up with that, and none of them have ever forgotten. Not even Laura has, for all that she’s never held it against him.

But Laura? Laura was _Peter’s_ , fucking hypocrite asshole, Derek wants to spit out. He’s suddenly, irrationally mad right back at Peter.

And then he looks down, because Laura’s just sucked in her breath, and he realizes how close they are. Laura’s nose grazes the bridge of his when she looks up, and her hand is on his thigh. Pushing it back, but it’s there, and he’s got his other hand dangling into her lap. And he looks at his sister, looking back at him, and she smiles. It’s exasperated, because they’re siblings and she’s always at least thought about watching out for him, even if she was doing it by taking what he wanted _first_. And it’s wicked, too, because they are just—they’re like that. They always have been, even way back when they were at least trying to be good kids.

“You are completely giving Petersen the wrong idea,” she says to Derek, with a coy little nod off to the side.

Derek tilts his head just enough to glimpse the man in question, who’s unashamedly staring as Lydia attempts to usher him out. Then he turns back to Laura. “Yeah?” he says. 

He shifts down, looking at her. A couple strands of her hair wick into the half-dried blood on his cheek. Laura gets it—she’s his sister, she’s always gotten him, always and she never _cared_ what that meant. What she saw, what she ended up knowing about him. That’s why he loves her, even after Peter, after everything else. That’s why he ran after them both, instead of staying and dying with the rest of his family.

And that’s why maybe, just this one time, he can see why Peter went for her. Because he gets her too.

Laura laughs, tipping up her head, and she’s not going for the kiss any more than he is, but it’s close as sin anyway. And then Derek keeps going, eeling over her till he can get to Peter. He slides his hand along the top of the sofa, bending his arm so Laura can dip out from under it, then curling it around Peter’s shoulders as he drags his legs over his sister’s lap.

Peter purses his lips, working them out of the thin little knot they’d been in. His eyes flick all over Derek’s face, so that if Derek didn’t know him so well, the hint of surprise would’ve gotten lost in all the movement. Why he’s surprised, Derek doesn’t know; it’s not like Derek has never been able to help himself, even when he damn well wanted to. If all their dead family between them can’t do it, then nothing alive can. They’re still alive because Stiles likes them like that, and they’ll die when he stops liking it.

Derek has to switch which arm he’s got around Peter’s neck as he turns himself around, sits with his back to the sofa arm, his ass in Peter’s lap. Laura smirks and puts her hand on Derek’s knee, pinning it as he pushes his forehead up against Peter’s cheek. And Peter lifts his hand and pushes Derek’s head off. He rubs at the blood Derek’s left on him, then looks at his fingers, frowning.

Then he sighs, but the corners of his mouth are turning up when he grabs Derek by the back of the neck, pulls up on that for a deep kiss. Derek reaches into Peter’s suitcoat, flipping the tie out of the way, and drags his hand all over, getting blood everywhere, but Peter doesn’t stop and rub that off. No, Peter drags his nails down Derek’s nape, sucking Derek’s tongue into his own mouth, and then arches as Derek plays with a nipple ring through his shirt.

“I think he’s got the right idea,” Peter finally says, pulling off, holding Derek back by two fingers twisted into the back of Derek’s tie. He looks up at Derek through half-closed eyes, like that hides their simmering heat any more than his disgusted act, and then moves his hand so his fingers are hooked over Derek’s tie-knot instead, pulling forward. “And you, Derek, are a filthy barbarian. You’re covered in that woman.”

Laura laughs again. She leans over, hand idly circling Derek’s knee, then pulls her legs up onto the sofa. Keeps Derek’s legs over her lap as she snuggles her head into Peter’s shoulder. Peter glances sharply at Derek, then raises his brows as Derek leans towards him. They go down and Peter shivers into the kiss a little, strangely allowing Derek to lead it.

Derek’s still got his finger on Peter’s nipple but he’s not doing anything with it. He thinks about it, and then, instead, drops his hand to his own lap. Adjusts his renewed erection as Peter’s eyes also drop, following that, and leans in to nuzzle behind Peter’s ear.

“Yeah, well, I kind of want to lick Laura’s perfume off you,” Derek mutters. Then breathes in deep, nose buried in Peter’s hair.

Peter bites back a groan. His hand yanks sharply at Derek’s tie, and then abruptly releases it. Then he looks up as Stiles and Lydia, guest-free, appear in front of them.

“Really?” Lydia says, glancing at Stiles. “That’s not like you. I mean, look at that.”

They have a lot of conversations like that, fragments with years of unspoken, buried history filling the spaces between. The fragments aren’t even because they started the conversation somewhere else and walk into hearing range halfway through it; they just throw out random sentences. Sometimes not even sentences, like the way Stiles looks levelly back at Lydia right now.

It took a while for them to be sure, but it only sounds like Lydia gets her way most of the time. She does tend to set the agenda, but that’s in absence of any objections from Stiles. And he’s objecting now; Derek might not know what the hell to or about, but he can recognize that much.

Lydia sighs and shakes her head, as if Stiles is just making their lives more difficult. But she doesn’t make even a token attempt to object. She just steps forward and grabs Laura by the arm, and pulls her out from under Derek’s legs. Laura’s batting her eyes, deliberately stumbling so that she falls against Lydia, and when Lydia rucks up her skirt to get a hand into the thigh slit, Laura leans over and presses her cheek to Lydia’s hair, making low, pleasured noises.

“I don’t know why you’re dragging your feet, honestly,” Lydia says to Stiles. “It’s been more than long enough.”

“Lyds, sometimes the fun’s in the lead-up, you know.” Stiles drops onto the couch where Laura had been. He pushes Derek’s legs out of the way, looking up at Lydia, and then reaches without looking and threads his fingers into Peter’s hair. Pulls Peter’s head back sharply, then slowly scrunches his grip as Peter moans. “Anyway. I don’t bitch about how long it takes to weed out your closet every time we move, do I?”

“Whatever, Stiles. I expect you in London by the end of the week,” Lydia sniffs, stalking off with Laura.

Stiles looks after her, eyes narrowed. He lets go of Peter’s hair but just moves his hand down to the back of Peter’s neck. Then he grins. Shakes his head. “She is such a pain, isn’t she?” he says, looking at Peter and Derek. Then he gets up, pushing at Derek’s foot as he does. “Well, up. If you’re going to mess up your clothes, we might as well go all the way with them.”

Derek presses his cheek into Peter’s shoulder. He can feel the other man trembling in anticipation; he’s shivering himself, badly enough that he needs a second before he can get off Peter. By the time they hit the bedroom, he’s screaming.


	4. Chapter 4

Closing up the estate really doesn’t take that long. Wherever they go, Stiles and Lydia seem to always be just a phone call away from silent, face-masked and gloved teams who will do anything from cleaning up crime scenes to dropping off fresh firearms and explosives to carefully packing up and shipping temperature-controlled crates of vintage couture clothing.

They haven’t figured out the next stop yet, but Lydia has some sort of personal business in Scotland, so Stiles takes Peter and Derek to London to hang out for a couple weeks, as he puts it.

He lets Peter and Derek go out together a few times. Peter’s a little less touchy since the night Derek killed Blake; they go to the British Museum, but spend as much time staring at weapons as they do dusty slabs of rock covered in languages Derek can’t read. And they’ve both got cock cages locked on them, but they block off a men’s bathroom, and Peter kneels in front of Derek and sucks the head of his cock while working his fingers in Derek’s ass and all along Derek’s perineum till he’s milked Derek temporarily dry. He doesn’t bitch at how long it takes Derek to stop clutching at his head and sobbing into his shoulder, either. Derek puts up with an art museum after that, and later that night, when Stiles is done with them and their cocks are free, Peter fucks himself on Derek’s cock until they’re both exhausted. Derek wakes up in the morning with Peter still on it, mewling sleepily as he rocks on Derek’s first erection of the day.

“So you two seem to have straightened things out,” Stiles says one day, while he and Derek are having tea.

Actual tea, in a private room in some incredibly fancy tea room, with the little sandwiches and everything. Stiles will do stuff like this sometimes, usually in between especially rough, prolonged sessions in bed. He’s surprisingly patient about waiting for them to heal up—permanent scarring just is unnecessary loss of sensation, he claims—but it’s not just having something to keep him from getting bored. If that was it, he could always kill somebody.

It’s more like he wants to see how they do when he’s distracting them with weirdness and not sex. Which Derek guesses makes a sort of sense: Stiles can get kind of mad scientist, with the way he likes to poke and prod and come at things from bizarre, seemingly irrelevant angles. But why he’s got Derek down here and not Peter, who would be all over this kind of set-up, that, Derek doesn’t get.

“Okay,” Derek says.

Stiles pops a white bread sandwich with a filling that’s yellow with green specks into his mouth. “You know, the whole Laura thing,” he says.

Derek fiddles with one of the fifty forks he has. “Look, why do you even care?”

“Well, aside from that I’m sleeping with both of you, and also, going through a lot of trouble to make sure we keep doing that,” Stiles says. He reaches for another sandwich, then puts his hand down and flops back in his chair instead. Fancy as the place is, they didn’t bat an eye at him and Derek coming in jeans, or at his faded flannel shirt either. “Do you have any idea how much it cost to wipe out that debacle of yours in Tijuana? So Lydia and I don’t have to avoid Mexico?”

Derek winces. Starts to ask when and how Stiles found out about that—sure as hell didn’t by asking Derek, and Peter would’ve said something if it’d been him, given that that was all his fault—and then remembers who he’s sitting across from. Just shuts up instead.

Stiles keeps looking at him. The guy’s worse than Peter that way, flat-eyed stare and patient waiting, whereas Peter can’t help making snide comments that Derek can usually use to change the subject, even if Peter circles back later.

“Thanks?” Derek tries. When that doesn’t work, he sighs and searches around for something. Anything. Sees the stupid sandwiches. Pinches one off the party tower and nibbles cautiously at it. “What? Did we do it wrong or something? How did you want us to do it?”

“Hey, hey, I’m not getting into that. Your incest, your deal,” Stiles says, holding up his hands, as if he’s feeling in the least threatened. “I just want to know that it’s good. Because—”

“You want to see me fuck my sister?” Derek says. The sandwich tastes less stupid than it looks, so he finishes it off but he doesn’t really want another one. He’s not the sweet tooth in the family, but that’s the only other option, so he picks up a miniscule cake. “Or watch us both suck off Peter? Because don’t tell me you’re in this to make sure everybody’s okay.”

Stiles laughs and pulls his chair forward. He braces his arm on the table so he can grab some little cakes, too, and then he leaves his elbow propped so that he can rest his chin on his hand as he eats. 

“I can want you to be stable without giving a fuck about your white picket fence, how about that,” he says. He licks some crumbs off his fingertip and then grabs a pancake thing the size of a quarter, smeared over with caviar and cream, and pops it into his mouth. “I do like you, you know.”

The cake is too cloying for Derek, so he washes out his mouth with some tea and then tries the pancake thing. Which actually is pretty tasty, a nice salty bite from the caviar. He has another, and then reluctantly backs off when Stiles reaches for the last one.

“You’re not going to ask why?” Stiles says.

“Why don’t you care about us trying to kill you?” Derek asks. He’s not planning on it. He’s not even trying to make Stiles mad, or anything like that. He’s just thrown, sitting here, not tied up or trying not to whimper at some sex toy. He doesn’t even want to kill anybody. English tea service is weird but other than that, he’s just realized, he’s kind of enjoying himself.

Stiles goes very still and Derek thinks that, as usual, he’s managed to fuck things up just as they’re getting pretty decent. But then Stiles tilts his head, lets his free hand fall to the table. He picks up a butter knife and starts twirling it handle-down, then looks up at Derek.

“Well, one, I’m not sure you actually ever wanted to,” Stiles says. “I mean. Aside from the first, what, ten minutes or so when we met. You’re like the apex predator of passive-aggressive self-destruction, Derek, cut every other competitor down like they’re nothing.”

Derek bridles a little. Mostly because it’s true.

“It’s okay, it’s part of your charm.” Stiles grins at him, then drops the butter knife. Doesn’t twitch as it clatters off the edge of the table and onto the floor. “Two…I’m a professional killer. We don’t die in nice places, unless you count the roof across from somebody’s sixty-room mansion. And if I didn’t want to deal with that, then I should really find another career. But I don’t. I like this one. It works for me.”

“And we what, work for you now?” Derek says.

“On a lot of levels, but in the sense you mean, definitely. You’re getting good enough I almost think we could bill you out separately,” Stiles says. He pauses, then smiles again. It’s…not soft, nothing about the man is soft, even when he’s being gentle, but it’s a lot less sarcastic than usual. “I just don’t want somebody I don’t know to kill me, whenever that happens. Best-case scenario, it’s somebody I give a damn about, too. Because then—at least that means it’s not just because I was in the way.”

When he’s done, he reaches out for a sandwich and eats it. Chews with a thoughtful look on his face, then makes an approving noise and reaches for another one. Looks that one over, flicking a bit of filling onto his nail so he can test the flavor. He makes a face and puts it down, and it’s all just very normal.

Derek doesn’t expect normal from him. But that was a little…as terrible as Derek’s had it sometimes, he doesn’t think he’s ever had it that bad. And he doesn’t think Stiles was born that way, either. That right there, somebody made Stiles be like that.

“That’s not why you’re keeping us around,” Derek finally says.

“Oh, God no,” Stiles immediately says. He shakes his head, looks at Derek, and then makes a face. “Are you kidding me? Derek, unlike some people, I am _fully_ invested in living as long as I can, doing whatever I like doing. I’m just saying, since you asked why I don’t care that you’re not trying to kill me. Well, the answer is, I actually do, but then, what you were really asking was, why am I not worried? And the answer to _that_ is because even sociopaths have feelings once in a while, and if you try and make yourself some Terminator robot to escape that, you just end up crushed by some hero. Might as well deal with it head-on instead.”

Derek thinks that over. Eats another cake, not expecting a lot, but he gets a tart lemon one that’s surprisingly good. He savors it a little, then cleans out his mouth with tea.

“So you like me,” he says. “Us. You like us.”

Stiles smiles. “Yeah, I do.”

“And you’re keeping us?” Derek says.

There’s a pause before Stiles answers. It’s not so long that Derek starts to worry, but it’s long enough to make him look up. Stiles has his phone out and he’s looking at it, thumb posed over the screen, but it doesn’t seem like that’s what’s preoccupying him.

“Yeah,” Stiles says. “Yeah, I’m gonna. So I want to chip you, too. And you remember me talking about tattooing your ass?”

Derek nearly bites off the rim of the teacup, remembering. He makes himself put the cup down and then he takes a deep breath. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. Okay.”

* * *

Later that week, Stiles takes him to some backalley place tucked behind a set of dumpsters, which turns out to be sleek and modern inside, all white and chrome. There’s a waiting room, and they actually have to wait a few minutes while the receptionist hurries back to get somebody.

Derek fits in with the rest of the people waiting, with his black jeans and leather coat, but Stiles’ bright flannel stands out like a sore thumb. It gets the eye of a big, bald-headed man, who tracks them with his eyes, smiling unpleasantly, hands toying with the collar of the half-naked man kneeling at his feet.

“Hey, if you need any help breaking that one in, I run sessions,” the man calls to—Derek. “He looks a little forward, if you know what I mean.”

“Thanks, but we’re good,” Stiles says. He doesn’t look over, just folds his arms over the counter and leans over, bobbing like an impatient kid as he tries to see what’s going on in the back.

The man looks disbelievingly at Derek, while another big bouncer type, who’d been watching on in interest, steps up and reaches towards Derek’s face. “Oh, that’s a surprise I li—” that idiot starts.

Then he shuts up, because Derek’s just slammed his chin down into the counter. Derek lets go and the man, screaming through a waterfall of blood and broken teeth, rolls away to clutch at his dented jaw. The other man jerks forward, reaching into his coat, and then stops because he finally notices Stiles has a gun on him.

“I haven’t been here in a while, I admit,” Stiles says to the receptionist, who’s just come back to look both terrified and exasperated. “But what the hell happened to your standards?”

The receptionist starts apologizing profusely, to the apparent surprise of the first man. He’s still thinking about going for whatever he’s got under his coat, and his sub’s gotten off his knees to flick out a switchblade. Which Stiles shoots out of his hand, gun barely moving before it’s back in the first man’s face. That one finally starts to look a little worried.

Though not so much that he doesn’t give Derek a furious look. He mouths something at Derek, who doesn’t even bother trying to lip-read it. Instead Derek just steps back, just as Stiles loses patience and wings the man’s arm with a bullet.

For all that he’s built like a tank, the man crumples back into one of the waiting chairs, clutching at his arm and howling like it’s a gut shot. His sub gets knocked over before he’s half-risen, then dragged back out through the front door by a pair of black-suited men, and then another pair come in for the dom. 

As he’s being dragged out, Derek catches his eye, then drops to kneel next to Stiles. He leans his head against Stiles’ hip, chin jerked up to grin at the dumbass, and then, when Stiles puts his arm down, he presses his cheek against the side of Stiles’ gun.

It’s a little warm from the shots. Not much, just a whisper, already disappearing, even as Derek nuzzles for it. He knows better than to try and lick or suck at the gun—Stiles hates having to do extra cleaning—so he crooks his head, letting the muzzle push up under his chin as Stiles lifts the gun away.

He looks up, and Stiles glances down, then looks at somebody across the counter. Stiles puts his gun away and then puts his hand back into Derek’s hair, stroking his fingers slowly through it. “You are seriously the only reason I bother with this place, Messner,” Stiles says. 

Derek tunes out the rest of the conversation, till they’ve gone into one of the rooms. Stiles pushes him onto something that looks like a massage chair, with the big donut pillow for the head and footrests so he can sit with his face semi-tilted towards the floor. He’s still settling into place when Stiles puts a hand on his side, stopping him. Makes him crouch while Stiles jerks open his fly, pushes his jeans halfway down his ass and then pulls his cock and scrotum through the open zipper. The little metal teeth scrape over his rubber cock sheath, then bite at the exposed skin at the base of his cock, where the sheath ends.

He squirms at it and Stiles shoves him down into the chair, then drags his arms around it and down, cuffing his wrists together. Then does something to the cuffs, followed by some fiddling with his piercings that makes Derek groan. When his hand moves away, Derek shifts and then hisses, feeling a tug that goes from his bound wrists down to the barbells through his balls.

“Calm down,” Stiles says. He rubs his hand up Derek’s back, gathering up Derek’s shirt as he goes, then splays his hand over the folds to keep them in place. His nails scratch lightly at Derek’s tattoo as he circles a spot at the base of Derek’s spine with his other hand, right where he’d put in the microchip.

The spot’s half-healed and Derek bucks a little, then whines as his piercings get yanked, his back gets raked over by Stiles’ nails. The tattoo artist, this Messner guy, he chuckles darkly and discusses a few last details with Stiles while stenciling on the design. “Nice work up there,” he says, and Stiles’ fingertips lightly pet Derek’s tattoo. “You don’t look like a secondhand goods man, Stiles, what happened?”

“Well, you don’t look like that dumbass crowd out there either, but I guess you gotta do what you gotta do,” Stiles says. “Anyway, this tattoo here—”

“It was for my family, after they died,” Derek mutters. He moves his arms around to a few different positions, but the one that allows him to brace them against the chair is the one that stretches out the chain going to his piercings the most. Of course. So he braces them, sucking down the whimpers, till he feels the first bite of the needle, and then he lets his arms hang. “It wasn’t anybody else, I got it myself.”

Stiles twists Derek’s shirt further up, then slides his hand underneath and pushes it back up out the collar, so that he can grip Derek’s nape. The shirt digs under Derek’s arms, adding another layer of hurt. It’s not much of one, nuisance level, but it’s on top of the needle, the strain in his arms, the bursts of pain in his balls whenever his hands swing too far. The lower ache of denied arousal, throbbing through his cock and back into his groin. Taken altogether, it’s a lot and Derek can’t help his groans. He can hold himself still but he can’t shut himself up.

“…why they were confused,” Messner’s saying. “Collar would help a lot with that.”

“I might be willing to pay in kind, but that doesn’t mean I’m taking everything you throw out,” Stiles says, an edge of warning in his voice. Then he kneads at the muscles tensing in Derek’s neck, laughing indulgently as Derek shudders and Messner swears at that. “Besides, they don’t _need_ them.”

Messner’s silent for a few minutes, just working with the needle. “Yeah, I can see that. And believe me, I don’t take you for my friend for a second. Never did, not since I saw your psych profile.”

“Which is probably why you’re my only law enforcement buddy who’s still alive,” Stiles says dryly. He scratches roughly at Derek’s neck, then smooths the spots over with his fingertips when Derek whimpers. “Hold still, he’s almost done.”

Derek’s floating by the time the new tattoo’s taped over with gauze, and Stiles uncuffs him. He stumbles into the other man, then noses into Stiles’ neck and just stands like that, panting, while Stiles pulls his jeans back up, tucks in his cock and balls. Then leads him back through the place and into their car, cuffing his wrists to the gearshift.

His head starts to clear a little at that point, mostly because Stiles makes him move around. He can’t put pressure on the tattoo so they lower the seat back and he curls up sideways, facing Stiles. His jeans are starting to slide down his hips; Stiles left the button of his fly undone, to keep his waistband off the gauze, and the zipper’s worked open. Stiles glances over as he gets behind the wheel and Derek notices, and pushes across the car, till his head is in Stiles’ lap and Stiles’ free hand is cupping his balls, thumb playing with the barbells.

“Who was that?” Derek mumbles. He’s rolling his hips lazily up into Stiles’ hand, even as his cock squeezes painfully against the stiff rubber wrapped around it.

“Oh, this guy who knew me back when I was in the army. Well, I was sort of in it.” Stiles says. “Mostly I joined to get the free training, and the starter guns and ammo. I tested straight into this top-secret sniper program, did a couple missions, and then got a medical discharge for PTSD.”

Derek rocks his head back, blinking dazedly up at the other man. “PTSD? Psych profile?”

“I got bored, wanted to go into the private sector, and Lydia wanted to make money. You can’t buy Prada on what the government pays you,” Stiles says. He takes his hand out of Derek’s jeans to steer into a turn, then puts it back. “Messner’s ex-FBI. He was following up on what Gerard did to my family and friends. Smart enough to figure out that things didn’t match up. Though Lyds and I were pretty raw back then, too. We’re a lot better at it now.”

“So…why don’t you kill him?” Derek asks.

He thinks that’s going to get him pain, and braces himself, but Stiles…just drives. Fingers wrapped around Derek’s cock, firm but still.

“He’s _ex-_ FBI and not dead FBI because he owes me. Also—he met me before everybody died, he was on that investigation too, so he knew me a little bit before. We weren’t friends, believe me, but…he and Lydia, they’re the only ones alive who remember that me,” Stiles finally says. 

He stretches out his legs, then flops back with a sigh. Lets his hand drag up so that it pulls along Derek’s cock, and even if it’s pointless Derek still thrusts into it, rattling his cuffs.

“And Lydia likes me better this way, and he doesn’t.” Stiles shrugs. Looks down at Derek, then grins. Takes his hand out of Derek’s jeans and grabs Derek’s shoulder, pulling him forward before he can knock the new tattoo into something. “And you and Peter, and I guess Laura, you’ve gotten to know me now.”

“Yeah,” Derek says. He mouths at Stiles’ jeans, then presses his lips down and just shivers as Stiles runs fingertips over his first tattoo. “Yeah. Yeah, we like you.”

Stiles laughs. “You’re gone, aren’t you? Well, let’s get back to Peter.”

Peter’s tied up at the hotel. On his side on the bed, facing away from the door, with his hands behind his back, his ankles tied to his wrists. Instead of putting a vibrator in him, Stiles hooked a chain from the tip of his cock cage and ran it through both nipple rings, then back down, between his legs and up under his arms to the back of his gag. Then left a laptop on the bed so Peter could follow their progress via GPS tracking of Derek’s microchip, positioning it so Peter can tilt his head to watch while his nipples are being pulled on, or not look and get a break.

From how red and swollen his nipples are, he was looking more than not. He whimpers urgently around the gag as soon as he hears them, hands twisting around each other. Puts his head into Stiles’ lap as soon as Stiles unhooks the chain, licking and lapping at Stiles’ fingers as the gag comes out.

Stiles smiles and pushes his fingers into Peter’s mouth, letting Peter moan around them. Then pulls them out, stroking both sides of Peter’s face, making soothing noises. “Aww, come on, we weren’t gone that long,” he says. He grips Peter’s shoulders and pulls Peter’s head further onto his legs, then runs his hand down to tease a nipple ring. “And I brought back Derek. You know I always bring him back.”

“Please,” Peter says, ragged, closing his eyes and nuzzling frantically at Stiles’ crotch. “Please, please, Stiles, please, I can’t— _please_. I can’t, I can’t, not anymore, I can’t—”

He can get so worked up. He can have sound or video on them and he still is this desperate when they get back, all fervent lips and soft pleas. It’s what those assholes in the Alphas did, Derek knows that, he’s known that for a while, but he never saw exactly what that meant before Stiles. Peter just got really bitter and hellish and angry at him and Laura, and sometimes almost got them killed out of sheer spite, and when Derek wasn’t running for his life, he was bitter and angry right back.

But Peter doesn’t get like that now. Peter’s _glad_ they’re back, crazed with it, kissing and pressing against anything he can reach, to the point that Stiles has to shake him hard to be able to untie his ankles. Even then, he’s moaning, straining to touch. He spreads his legs as Stiles rolls him onto his back, arching even though Derek can see him wincing from the cramps. “Please, please let me, please—” he begs, right up till Stiles kisses him.

Stiles likes playing slow when Peter’s like that, running his hands up and down the insides of Peter’s thighs as he tries to close them around Stiles, force their bodies together. Dragging them up Peter’s sides, fisting them in Peter’s hair as he leisurely takes Peter’s mouth, then wrapping them over Peter’s ribs as he suckles one nipple, then the other while Peter sobs.

Derek can’t stand it, just watching. He’s got his hands cuffed behind him now but he crawls onto the bed, inches over till he’s beside them, right next to them, to Peter’s moaning mouth. He wrenches himself up and gets over that and Peter lunges for him, twisting to catch their mouths together, even as Stiles is tugging at Peter’s balls to hold him back.

Sometimes Stiles plays with that, too. He’ll tie Derek to one end of the bed and sit Peter on his cock at the other, and bring Peter off so Derek just gets to rub off against his uncle’s slack body afterward. Or he’ll have Derek, keeping Peter blindfolded while he bends Derek over the other man so Peter can hear and feel it but not see. Either way, it drives Derek nearly murderous but it completely destroys Peter. Leaves him trembling for hours, all strung out and done and still doing anything, everything to keep them within sight. He’s dragged himself across a room with little more than his chin and toes to just to follow them.

And that Derek can’t stand. Much as Peter can make him hate the man, he can’t see that, can’t watch Peter flip out thinking they really weren’t coming back. He doesn’t understand a lot about Stiles and he doesn’t care, but he doesn’t understand why Stiles keeps doing that, even after knowing _why_ Peter loses his mind, and he _does_ care about that. If he were really going to kill Stiles over something, that would be why.

Or he’s been thinking so far. But Stiles doesn’t fuck them around today, just pulls Peter back the once and then gets out of the way, snickering as usual. He strips, watching them twist up against each other, kissing and trying to rub their cocks together, and then climbs back in. Pulls a plug out of Peter and replaces it with his cock, but then he just reaches around, shucks off their cock bindings, and lets them rut.

And Derek gets all that frantic welcome from Peter, full-body press even as Peter’s hissing from his sore nipples, hot eager mouth, cock swelling against Derek’s own. He gets it and he digs into it, trying to match Peter, sucking down the side of Peter’s throat, shoving his thigh in between Peter’s legs to push that fraction closer. Stiles is helping, reaching around to drag on Derek’s arms, and Derek hears the man laugh again, and he realizes Stiles isn’t getting off on holding them apart. It’s not like the Alphas at all, or like every other person who’s fucked with Derek and his family.

Stiles gets off on seeing them crash together like this. Desperate, sure, but thrilled with it, hungry with it, so aching to grab each other that it’s a good thing they’re tied up because otherwise they’d probably rip themselves to pieces. He gets off on seeing them so raw that they forget everything except how very very badly they want each other. He gets off on them _liking_ each other.

Derek realizes that, and he comes like someone’s slammed him through a brick wall. Blood’s in his mouth, blood and flesh, Peter’s bleeding shoulder but Derek sucks mindlessly at it, rest of his body shuddering uncontrollably. Peter’s thrusting haphazardly up against him, not far from climax himself. Or maybe he’s already come, and he’s just being fucked into by Stiles. Derek doesn’t know, he can’t see, his head is rolling in crazy circles. He just presses back as best he can, and rides along with the other man, because he wants it as bad as Stiles. He wants this.

* * *

“A bite, he said,” Peter murmurs later. When they’re clean, and mostly untied—Derek has his wrists cuffed in leather in front of him, Peter’s chained to the bed by an ankle—and Stiles is off plotting with Lydia. “On my left thigh.”

Peter shifts them apart, snorting as Derek lets out a half-hearted protest growl, and then pulls Derek’s hands down and uses them to trace a sort of elongated semi-circle over the spot in question. Then another one, on the other side of the thigh.

“Lydia’s apparently lent him a wolf skull for a pattern, so it’ll be anatomically accurate,” Peter adds. “Right over the femoral artery.”

“A kill bite?” Derek says.

“Laura had claws, you have a footprint, I get the teeth.” Peter shrugs carelessly. He releases Derek’s hands and then looks both pleased and arrogantly unsurprised as Derek promptly loops his arms down over Peter’s head. “I suppose meriting instant death is a compliment of sorts.”

Derek rolls his eyes, then tucks his head under Peter’s chin. Gives Peter’s nape a warning squeeze when he feels fingers near the new gauze pad on his back. “You sure it was just their high school mascot?”

“No, Derek, obviously it has greater meaning than that. But you have to be patient with these sorts of things, if you’re to have the time to put the puzzle together.” Peter sighs. “I don’t know why I still try to tell you. You never listen.”

“Can’t really blame me when one more tattoo and I found out about some guy who Stiles let live that none of us heard of before,” Derek mutters. “Maybe when he takes you, you’ll find out about the wolf thing.”

Peter’s silent a few seconds, just curling his hands over Derek’s hips. “I asked if you could come with us, for that,” he says. “He said yes.”

“Oh. Fine.” Then Derek feels Peter tense. He’s just starting to drift off, but that pulls him out. He’s irritated but he looks up. “What?”

“Nothing.” The way Peter’s voice lilts alone is enough to tell Derek more is coming. “Only that you spend years and years trailing after me like a lovesick puppy, nephew, and every time I give in and make the effort, and they’ve _always_ been efforts, given the messes we keep landing in, you just act like I’ve put you out—”

“God, I want to come. I’m just tired, okay? I got fucked stupid by the hitman next door,” Derek says. He breathes in and out, then pushes up so that they’re level with each other. Looks Peter in the eye. “I always want to come with you, even when it’s the worst goddamn idea in the world. Jesus. If there’s one thing I can’t ever learn _not_ to do.”

For a moment Peter looks back, quiet, solemn. And then he reaches up and he touches the side of Derek’s face. He’s still not smiling but that maybe…feels wrong, for him, with how his gaze changes. How he is, and how Derek wants him. “You’re the one I wanted to take with me,” he finally says. “Not Laura. She left with me, but that’s not the same, Derek.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.” Derek has to smirk a little when Peter looks surprised. He leans over and kisses the other man lightly, and then again, longer, softer, moaning when Peter’s hands stroke down his hips and come too close to his achingly limp cock. He still pushes up into it. “I’m not a fucking idiot, Peter. You just—you are just so fucking _irritating_ sometimes.”

“Just irritating?” Peter says, and he’s finally smiling.

Rolling his eyes, Derek puts his head down. Peter’s still teasing at him, rolling his barbells between thumbs and index fingers, but Derek shuts his eyes, even as his breathing catches. There’s no way he can go again tonight, and neither can Peter, however much of an asshole the man can be. Wants to be.

Which isn’t too much, apparently; Peter toys with the piercings a little more, then moves his hands back to Derek’s hips. “So he’s taking us both,” Derek mutters, once he’s stopped shivering.

“Yes, I think so,” Peter says. He takes a deep breath. “I want that too. I hope you realize.”

“Well, great, we all want the same thing for once.” Derek presses his head into Peter’s chest. “Can I sleep now?”

He hears the eye-roll in Peter’s voice. “Yes, nephew. You can sleep.”

“Good,” Derek mumbles, and as tired as they both are, they hitch a little at the word. Then breathe out slowly, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole idea of expert underworld “cleaners’ has popped up in a lot of places, but for this ‘verse I have in mind the ones from _John Wick_. That movie was such a pleasantly inventive surprise, what with the special coins for use between hitmen and support staff, and the whole of the Continental Hotel.
> 
> Messner (played by Ryan Reynolds) is from _Smokin’ Aces_ , which was a bonkers movie whose over-the-top hitmen fit the feel of this 'verse, I think. So the backstory is that FBI Agent Messner was on a team investigating Gerard Argent, including his first couple murders against Stiles/Lydia's family and friends. Gerard killed everybody before the FBI could get very far, Stiles and Lydia went underground, and then Messner tracked Stiles down during Stiles' very brief stint in the army. But Messner got cashiered out of the FBI for the events of _Smokin' Aces_ and ended up hitting up Stiles and Lydia for help getting away from the U.S.


	5. Chapter 5

“I think it was because I was mad at Mom, mostly,” Laura says. “She was just so damn—right. And perfect, all the time. And I was supposed to be exactly like her. Everybody was always saying that, remember, oh, you look like you’re twins! And I think she actually started to believe it. She’d yell at me when we were alone, things like, I don’t know why you did that, I would have _never_ done that, I don’t know how you could’ve even thought to do that. I still don’t know what she wanted from me, you know.”

They’re sitting in a private lounge, waiting for the train. Well, Stiles and Lydia are sitting, over where there are actual seats. Derek and Laura and Peter are on the floor with the luggage. Laura’s kneeling and peering at her phone, cursing whenever her cuffed hands make her fumble it, with a chain coming out of the bottom of her sundress and leading over to the handle of Lydia’s jewelry case. Peter’s lying on his side, head pillowed on Derek’s chest, also fumbling a phone with cuffed hands because he took too long doing his hair, so Stiles gagged him and now he has to type out whatever he wants to say.

It’s a big, broad gag, a piece of stiff leather that wraps from just under his nose to well under his chin, and back around his head, and it isn’t exactly comfortable to have pressing down, but Derek can’t move Peter because his hands are cuffed behind his back, to the biggest of Stiles’ gun cases. He’s pretty sure he didn’t annoy Stiles but the man’s fucking with him anyway, grinning whenever Derek looks over.

Peter moves his phone so Derek can see it, because God forbid Derek miss one of his snarky comments. Or not pass it on, because Peter is an asshole, with or without words. Derek sighs and looks, and then twists his head to look at his sister. “He says he thinks Mom just didn’t want you to turn out like him. She…um, she was a lot wilder when they were kids, apparently? But she straightened out, but Peter didn’t feel like it, and she didn’t want—Peter, I can’t read if you keep trying to change it.”

“Is he revising himself?” Laura says, amused. Then she sighs. “Yeah, well, I don’t know if I would’ve turned out like uncle Peter here, if things had gone differently. But I pretty much gave up on being like her after Calvin. You remember him?”

“The guy who tried to roofie you at that away cross-country meet?” Derek says.

Peter starts sharply, looking over at Laura, and Derek remembers they…had not actually told anyone else about that one. When Peter looks at Derek, Derek shrugs and then moves his knee to press their thighs together, and Peter subsides. Still curious, but he looks a little less…urgently vicious about it.

“Yeah, well, you know how I told you I was gonna tell his girlfriend?” Laura says. “So actually, I told her and then talked her into screwing where he’d walk in on it, because turns out he was drugging girls because he had performance issues when they were awake. Couldn’t do it. So we fucked, and when he walked in, I told him that _this_ is how you make a girl happy. And he stormed out and drove off, and crashed into a tree and died.”

Peter makes a short, rumbling noise, so clearly a laugh that he really doesn’t need to jab Derek in the ribs with his phone. But he does, so Derek looks down. “Uncle Peter says excellent execution, niece,” Derek reads.

Laura snorts, but her eyes are distant. “Thanks,” she says. She pauses, then looks uncertainly at Derek. “So I really didn’t feel bad about it. His girlfriend did, and I didn’t feel bad about her either. I felt like I should, you know, but…I didn’t. And I still don’t. And I think that’s when I started actually liking it when Peter came around and hung out with us.”

“I was going to go over and beat him up for you, when I was older,” Derek tells her. He kind of regrets it when she laughs, but she just leaves it there. She’s going to bring it up later, Laura can never resist, but she’s not doing that now. “I signed up for basketball at school after that. So I could—”

“So you could get the muscles for it? Aww, little bro,” Laura says, and she’s mocking but there’s real warmth underneath, that and gratefulness.

Peter bumps Derek again, but when Derek looks down, it’s not the phone. In fact, Peter actually puts the phone aside, and then he heaves himself up and over, twisting around so that he’s on his knees and facing Derek. He slides in between Derek’s legs, arms pushing right up against Derek’s crotch so Derek sucks in his breath, and then he puts his head back on Derek’s chest. Rubs his cheek a little, half-closes his eyes while he’s doing it. That’s it but Derek’s cock stirs, making him glad Stiles at least didn’t put anything on that today.

Then Derek moves his foot to push into Peter’s inside thigh, where the tattoo’s still healing. Peter hisses loudly enough for it to make it through the gag, but he rubs his head harder against Derek.

“So I screwed him because he was honestly a lot hotter than any of the boys at school,” Laura says. She’s watching them and she’s liking it. Enough to look a little wary when her and Derek’s gazes cross, but…she’s just into it. She doesn’t want to be where Derek is, or where Peter is, and Derek can tell the difference now. “That and I didn’t feel like I _had_ to feel guilty around Peter, which was a relief.”

And Derek still isn’t interested in his sister, and he’s pretty sure she just likes fucking with him—and Peter—but he gets that everything in their family, what’s left of it, it’s all blurred-out lines anyway. And he knows he doesn’t give a shit. They’re what they are, and that’s where he’s done. 

“I mean, I love him, he’s our evil uncle and all.” Laura grins at Peter, who snorts and slides a little further down Derek to get his phone back. “But nah, Derek, never into him like you. Don’t think I ever will be, all right? Back then was as close as I got, and my tastes are a lot different these days.”

“I’m not reading that to her,” Derek says to Peter. Then he looks at Laura. “It’s just something about redheads.”

Laura nods approvingly. “Yes, definitely spare me the natural color jokes. Sometimes your sense of humor is so lame, Peter.”

Peter types till Derek pushes his foot into Peter’s thigh again, and then Peter sags, phone dropping to Derek’s chest, groan filtering out through the gag. He looks up at Derek, heavy-lidded, just before his fingers start prodding at Derek’s piercings through Derek’s jeans.

Derek hisses and lets his head loll against the case at his back. He glimpses Stiles and Lydia and they’re standing up, looking like they’re going to come over.

“You think any of us were really normal? Even Mom—if she was just repressing the whole time,” Laura says. Sudden start, but her voice falters a little at the end.

She frowns as Peter pushes up against Derek, holding his phone out to her. Her frown deepens, and then she snorts and shakes her head at him.

“Just reminding me that Mom got us into it with the Argents in the first place,” she tells Derek. “Yeah, okay, good point, Peter. Now don’t be smug about it.”

“Maybe Cora?” Derek says.

Laura pauses. The sarcastic glint fades from her eyes, just before she looks down. And Peter’s very—well, he’s already quiet but he’s still now, still and also looking at the floor. It makes Derek wish he hadn’t mentioned their younger sister. Their mother, they’ve had so many fights over—over and for and against—that she doesn’t bring much of a twinge anymore. And the other relatives Derek hadn’t known too well. But Cora had been just a little kid. Hadn’t even hit puberty.

Peter finally types something, then tilts his phone to show both of them: _Well, she never liked me._

Derek snorts, and then Laura drops her head again, but because she’s laughing. “Yeah, true, she never would’ve gone that way,” Laura mutters.

“Do you really care, anyway?” Derek says. “Did you want to be?”

“Nope,” Laura says after a long moment. “You?”

Derek looks at her. Then pulls his legs up, hooking his foot beneath Peter’s thigh to hike at the other man. Peter glances up, then tilts his head so that he has to be smirking behind the gag. He climbs back up Derek, letting the phone drop beside them, and then he straddles Derek’s thigh. Puts his arms around Derek’s neck and rocks down hard, pushing their groins together, so they moan just as Stiles comes up to grab Peter under the jaw, pulling him back against the other man.

“Hey, I know you’re having a cozy little chat and all, but it’s time to go,” Stiles says. Next to him, Lydia’s picking up her jewelry case, sending Laura scrambling to get up before the chain between her and that draws taut. “Come on.”

He pulls Peter up, then uncuffs Derek from the gun case. Recuffs Derek’s hands in front of him before starting to load up Derek’s arms with luggage. Derek grunts and steps back, then gets his feet braced.

“So what’s in Paris?” he asks. “You didn’t say.”

“Work. Also, some people we haven’t seen in a while,” Stiles says. He pats Derek’s ass, then switches to dumping bags on Peter. “You ready?”

“Yeah,” Derek says, already heading for the train. “Yeah, let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if you can actually hire entire private cars to go through the Chunnel, but the idea of Stiles screwing Derek and Peter under the Channel was too good to pass up.
> 
> ...yeah, yeah, Paris, people they know, it's a total tease. I may or may not write that out.


End file.
